The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.

We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.

When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.

a culture is no better than its woods

You must go to bed with friends or whores, where money makes up the difference in beauty or desire.

Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.