They say the first love's most important. That's very romantic, but not my experience.

When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.

Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven't got even that much, however loveless and boring - this is one of the harshest human miseries.

Four billion people on this earth, but my imagination is still the same. It's bad with large numbers. It's still taken by particularity. It flits in the dark like a flashlight, illuminating only random faces while all the rest go blindly by, never coming to mind and never really missed. . . . I can't tell you how much I pass over in silence.

In the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in this world.

Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune's darlings.

I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.