When any civilization is dust and ashes," he said, "art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning—human meaning, that is—is defined by them. You have to admit that.

We should take a lesson from the Irish potato famine: monocultures are vulnerable. Monocultures of any kind are very vulnerable, because one change and you're cooked. So we should be diversifying, wouldn't you say?

Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.

Maybe sadness was a kind of hunger, she thought. Maybe the two went together.

After everything that's happened, how can the world still be so beautiful? Because it is.

I want, I don’t want. How can one live with such a heart?

making final judgements about poets, cities or regions on the basis of an anthology is always dangerous: anthologies are mirages created, finally, by their editors.