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.

To stay in one place and watch the seasons come and go is tanatmount to constant travel: One is traveling with the earth.

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.

There are books which one should not attempt before having passed the age of forty.

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

the press is too often a distorting mirror, which deforms the people and events it represents, making them seem bigger or smaller than they really are.

The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice, much as the great unchanging statues have taught me to appreciate bodily motions.