How you die out in me: down to the last worn-out knot of breath you're there, with a splinter of life.

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown.

There's nothing in the world for which a poet will give up writing, not even he is a Jew and the language of his poems is German.

in the air, there your root remains, there, in the air

He speaks truly who speaks the shade.

Poetry is a sort of homecoming.

German poetry is going in a very different direction from French poetry.... Its language has become more sober, more factual. It distrusts "beauty." It tries to be truthful.