From the night, his solitude, the poet finds day and starts a diary that is lethal to the inert. The dark landscape yields a dialogue.

Even a polemic has some justification if one considers that my own first poetic experiments began during a dictatorship and mark the origin of the Hermetic movement.

A poet clings to his own tradition and avoids internationalism.

The poet does not fear death, not because he believes in the fantasy of heroes, but because death constantly visits his thoughts and is thus an image of a serene dialogue.

The writer of stories or of novels settles on men and imitates them; he exhausts the possibilities of his characters.

War, I have always said, forces men to change their standards, regardless of whether their country has won or lost.

Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal but which the reader recognizes as his own.

Europeans know the importance of the Resistance; it has been the shining example of the modern conscience.

The antagonism between the poet and the politician has generally been evident in all cultures.

After the turbulence of death, moral principles and even religious proofs are called into question.

We wrote verses that condemned us, with no hope of pardon, to the most bitter solitude.

No, the safest thing is to become an island. To make your house a citadel against all the garbage and ugliness in the world. How else can you be sure of anything?

Men like him, the kind of guys who left the womb fighting? They didn’t get fairy-tale endings. They burned bright until they burned out—and he was burning out.

But in the end I'd marry her to the one she herself loved. To a father, the man his daughter falls in love with herself always seems the worst. That's how it is.

What I would say to a person who is firm in their faith and wants to go into an acting career: It is such a difficult thing to do without compromising your beliefs.

People, like water, will run downhill, seeking their lowest level unless something interdicts them.

The big money in booms is always made first by the public - on paper. And it remains on paper.

Cigarettes are not a part of human behaviour, they are a habit.

We hide so well. This is the bottom line: how hidden is male subjectivity? Name five books where male subjectivity is produced in an honest way.

You're just a silly little Whitehall twit: you don't trust me and I don't trust you.

As a songwriter and musician, it strikes me that in music, a certain territorial nature when it comes to one's own autonomy around life and art is common and understood.