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

I could say that all my books were conceived by the time I was twenty, although they were not to be written for another thirty or forty years. But perhaps this is true of most writers—the emotional storage is done very early on.

Every hour has its immediate duty, its special injunction which dominates all others.

Men who care passionately for women attach themselves at least as much to the temple and to the accessories of the cult as to their goddess herself.

Want of passion is, I think, a very striking characteristic of Americans, not unrelated to their predilection for violence. For very few people truly have a passionate desire to achieve, and violence serves as a kind of substitute.

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

Every life is punctuated by deaths and departures, and each one causes great suffering that it is better to endure rather than forgo the pleasure of having known the person who has passed away. Somehow our world rebuilds itself after every death, and in any case we know that none of us will last forever. So you might say that life and death lead us by the hand, firmly but tenderly.