There are years from my childhood that I cannot remember and I cannot forget.

I wanted to spend all my time writing poetry. But when I had children I couldn't do that anymore.

Adolescents believe that the world belongs to the living, or more particularly to living people their age, so they feel within their rights if they destroy the canon or rewrite the fairy stories or act like Red Guards.

The models of adulthood are disappearing fast. How can two people have a new marriage if neither of them is an adult?

Before I was a parent I was struck by Rilke, who, as you know, didn't go to his daughter's wedding because he was writing a poem that day. That was the ideal for artistic behavior in 1950. That's the way I wanted to live.

I want nothing from You but to see You.

The Roman Catholic Church early on simply adapted the hierarchical structure of the Roman Empire and confused the whole thing. Vertical attention and hierarchy were so entangled, that when the French killed the king during the Revolution, they lost much of their vertical attention too.