Now I become myself. It’s taken time, many years and places.

One does not "find oneself" by pursuing one's self, but on the contrary by pursuing something else and learning through discipline or routine. . . who one is and wants to be.

Here life goes on, even and monotonous on the surface, full of lightning, of summits and of despair, in its depths. We have now arrived at a stage in life so rich in new perceptions that cannot be transmitted to those at another stage - one feels at the same time full of so much gentleness and so much despair - the enigma of this life grows, grows, drowns one and crushes one, then all of a sudden in a supreme moment of light one becomes aware of the sacred.

Routine is not a prison, but the way into freedom from time.

“How does one grow up?” I asked a friend the other day. There was a slight pause; then she answered, “By thinking.”

I sometimes imagine that as one grows older one comes to live a role which as a young person one merely 'played.

a poet never feels useful.