The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools.

All happiness is a form of innocence.

Books are not life, only its ashes.

I don't think I ever relinquish a person I have known, and surely not my fictional characters. I see them, I hear them, with a clarity that I would call hallucinatory if hallucination didn't mean something else ... A character whom we create can never die, any more than a friend can die ... Through [my characters] I've lived many parallel lives.

The memory of most men is an abandoned cemetery where lie, unsung and unhonored, the dead whom they have ceased to cherish. Any lasting grief is reproof to their neglect.

Everything that we do affects our fate for better or for worse. The circumstances into which we are born also exert a tremendous influence; we come into the world with debits and credits for which we are not responsible already posted to our account: this teaches us humility.

For me, a poet is someone who is 'in contact.' Someone through whom a current is passing.