Ancient and oriental civilizations were more sensitive than we are to the cycles of things; to the succession of generations, both divine and human; and to change within stasis. Western man is virtually alone in wanting to make his God into a fortress and personal immortality into a bulwark against time.

This city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream?

Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close.

I knew that good like bad becomes a routine, that the temporary tends to endure, that what is external permeates to the inside, and that the mask, given time, comes to be the face itself.

I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.

Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul.

Love is a punishment. We are punished for not having been strong enough to remain alone.