Films are even stranger, for what we are seeing are not disguised people but photographs of disguised people, and yet we believe them while the film is being shown.

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.

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.

Real love does not hurt, but the rotten lies about love can cause you to hate love.

You are your partner are on the same side - it's the side of the living.

You can't make everybody happy.

One will never get any more than he thinks he can get. YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES. Look back and see your progress - damn the torpedo, full speed ahead!

I prefer a kind of sweet, deep, rich prayer in which a person goes in and says, Take me down deep into the reason you gave me life. Take me down deep. It silences the chaos in me.

The ability to discriminate between that which is true and that which is false is one of the last attainments of the human mind.

I like to say that while antimatter may seem strange, it is strange in the sense that Belgians are strange. They are not really strange; it is just that one rarely meets them.

Human rights groups are locked in a fierce competition for big checks from wealthy donors and they need to generate big headlines.

True repentance does not permit repetition.