Poets don't finish poems, they abandon them.

There is only beauty / and it has only one perfect expression / poetry. All the rest is a lie /except for those who live by the body, love, and, that love of the mind, friendship. For me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because its sensual delight falls back deliciously in my soul.

A throw of the dice will never abolish chance.

The world exists to end up in a book.

O naked flower of my lips, you lie! I await a thing unknown or perhaps, unaware of the mystery and your cries you give, O lips, the supreme tortured moans of a childhood groping among its reveries to sort out finally its cold precious stones.

Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book.

The flesh is sad, alas, and I have read all the books.