Every great thinker is someone else's moron.

National identity is the last bastion of the dispossessed. But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same.

The pleasures of love are pains that become desirable, where sweetness and torment blend, and so love is voluntary insanity, infernal paradise, and celestial hell - in short, harmony of opposite yearnings, sorrowful laughter, soft diamond.

Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: You have to learn the rhythms of respiration - acquire the pace. Otherwise you stop right away.

One can be a great poet and be politically stupid.

There are more people than you think who want to have a challenging experience, in which they are obliged to reflect about the past.

All poets write bad poetry. Bad poets publish them, good poets burn them.