Art is fire plus algebra.

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.

Still anyone who trusts a serpent deserves its bite. The wise see a creature for what it is, not what it says it may be.

Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.

This American system of ours,call it Americanism,call it capitalism,call it what you will,gives each and every one of us a great opportunity if we seize it with both hands and make the most of it.

Our infrastructure will again be the best and we will restore the pride in our communities, our nation, and all over the United States we'll be proud again.

I like poems that are daggers that sing.

Never forget that I am paid for my troubles!

Whoever is born in New York is ill-equipped to deal with any other city: all other cities seem, at best, a mistake, and, at worst, a fraud. No other city is so spitefully incoherent.

No disaster is worse than being discontented.

The older I get, the more I look at movies as a moving miracle.

I may be an old lion, but I can still bite someone's hand off if he puts it in my mouth.