There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite.

Besides, rereading, not reading, is what counts.

You don't have to try to be contemporary. You are already contemporary. What one has in mythology is being evolved all the time. Personally, I think I can do with Greek and Old Norse mythology. For example, I don't think I stand in need of planes or of railways or of cars.

A book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then the right reader comes along, and the words—or rather the poetry behind the words, for the words themselves are mere symbols—spring to life, and we have a resurrection of the word.

The word happiness exists in every language; it is plausible the thing itself exists.

Captivated by its discipline, humanity forgets and goes on forgetting that it is the discipline of chess players, not of angels.

The tango is a direct expression of something that poets have often tried to state in words: the belief that a fight may be a celebration.