Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.

Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.

And this is the simple truth - that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself to be on firm ground.

We cannot put off living until we are ready.

The struggle with the past is not a hand-to-hand fight. The future overcomes it by swallowing it. If it leaves anything outside it is lost.

The metaphor is perhaps one of man's most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.

The poet begins where the man ends. The man's lot is to live his human life, the poet's to invent what is nonexistent.