Captivated by its discipline, humanity forgets and goes on forgetting that it is the discipline of chess players, not of angels.

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.

The mind speaks, though it does not have lips.The heart moves, though it does not have feet.The soul rises, though it does not have wings.

Without our ancestors we would not be.

Count your summers, not your winters.

He who desires naught will always be free.

No one is strong enough  -  given the magnitude of the task, everyone has to step up their game.

I am a Norfolk man and Glory in being so.

The image gets built one way or another... it doesn't get done by following the natural order of things, but arises instead from an order that you have in your mind.

Truth is the nursing mother of genius.

We expect others to act rationally even though we are irrational.

I told you I didn't want to fight with Charlie." "Nobody said that you had to." I glowered at him. "I can't help myself when he gets all bossy like that―my natural teenage instincts overpower me.