Mankind's greatest error, the biggest deception of the past thousand years is this: to confuse poverty with stupidity.

I think a lot about the poems I wasn't able to write...I masturbrated...Solitude is essentially a matter of pride; you bury yourself in your own scent. The issue is the same for all real poets. If you've been happy for too long, you become banal. By the same token, if you've been unhappy for a long time, you lose your poetic power...Happiness and poverty can only coexist for the briefest time. Afterword either happiness coarsens the poet or the poem is so true it destroys his happiness.

My religion is complicated. Literature is my true religion. After all, I come from a completely non-religious family.

I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well.

In a brutal country like ours, where human life is 'cheap', it's stupid to destroy yourself for the sake of your beliefs. Beliefs? High ideas? Only people in rich countries can enjoy such luxuries.

When another writer in another house is not free, no writer is free.

When two people love each other as we do, no one can come between them, no one," I said, amazed at the words I was uttering without preparation. "Lovers like us, because they know that nothing can destroy their love, even on the worst days, even when they are heedlessly hurting each other in the cruelest , most deceitful ways, still carry in their hearts a consolation that never abandons them." (p.191)