There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die.

The camera may do justice to laughter, but must degrade sorrow.

In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet; the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever.

Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.

God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.

An honest self-portrait is extremely rare because a man who has reached the degree of self-consciousness presupposed by the desire to paint his own portrait has almost always also developed an ego-consciousness which paints himself painting himself, and introduces artificial highlights and dramatic shadows.

To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however "good" I may become, remains unchanged.