A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships

So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.

Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.

I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.

I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.

The worst labyrinth is not that intricate form that can entrap us forever, but a single and precise straight line

The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library . . . Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book.

Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.

I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

The original is unfaithful to the translation.

Mankind is one human family.

Never reveal what is real

Where women are, the better things are implied if not spoken.

His pear-shaped head, I could now see, was situated on top of a pear-shaped body, which his black gown caused to resemble a piece of fruit going to a funeral.

There is a source of power in each of us that we don't realize until we take responsibility.

Sometimes, niña, our greatest gifts grow from what we are not given.

I don't think any of us should forget that the security of America is our highest responsibility.

Writing is my shelter. I don't hide behind the words; I use them to dig inside my heart to find the truth.

Detective stories are the art-for-art's sake of yawning Philistinism.

Stocks are the only thing that people are happy to buy when the price goes up.