For me, poetry is a situation - a state of being, a way of facing life and facing history.

I write about wounds, the eternal treasons of life. It's not very funny, but it's sincere. My commitment is to sincerity.

I liked Sartre's views but not his writing.

I read a poem every night, as others read a prayer.

In the 70s I was in exile; every time I went back I wondered if they'd take my passport away.

I came to poetry through the urgent need to denounce injustice, exploitation, humiliation. I know that's not enough to change the world. But to remain silent would have been a kind of intolerable complicity.

Most of those who died did not die of hunger but of hatred. Feeling hatred diminishes you. It eats at your from within and attacks the immune system. When you have hatred inside you, it always crushes you in the end.