More belongs to marriage than four legs in a bed.

Verses are not, as people think, feelings (those one has early enough) -- they are experiences. For the sake of a verse one must see many cities, men, and things, one must know the animals feel how birds fly, and know the gesture with which the little flowers open in the morning.

The artist's experience lies so unbelievably close to the sexual, to its pain and its pleasure, that the two phenomena are really just different forms of one and the same longing and bliss.

I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.

Stand up during supper and walk outdoors, and keep on walking.

For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions (one has emotions early enough)-they are experiences.

[A]t bottom, and just in the deepest and most important things, we are unutterably alone, and for one person to be able to advise or even help another, a lot must happen, a lot must go well, a whole constellation of things must come right in order once to succeed.