I've had the good fortune to read a lot of great American writers in translation, and my absolute beloved, for me one of the greatest writers ever, is Mark Twain. Yes, yes, yes. And Whitman, from whom the whole of 20th-century poetry sprung up. Whitman was the origin of things, someone with a completely different outlook. But I think that he's the father of the new wave in the world's poetry which to this very day is hitting the shore.

You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.

Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know.

Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person.

Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!

Generally speaking, life is so rich and full of variety; you have to remember all the time that there is a comical side to everything.

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.