In this most Christian of worlds all poets are Jews.

There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?

I opened my veins. Unstoppably life spurts out with no remedy. Now I set out bowls and plates. Every bowl will be shallow. Every plate will be small. And overflowing their rims, into the black earth, to nourish the rushes unstoppably without cure, gushes poetry.

Wings are freedom only when they are wide open in flight. On one's back they are a heavy weight.

What shall I do, singer and first-born, in a world where the deepest black is grey, and inspiration is kept in a thermos? with all this immensity in a measured world?

How quiet the writing, how noisy the printing.

An amazing observation: it is precisely for feelings that one needs time, not for thought. ... Feelings, obviously, are more demanding than thought.