He constructed a vast labyrinthine of periods, made impassable by the piling-up of clauses upon clauses-clauses in which oversight and bad grammar seemed manifestations of disdain.

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.

I wonder if killing yourself is the only thing you can control in your entire life, and that's why it's a sin. Because you're beating God at his own game.

...do you ever know a moment is important as it's happening, or is it only when you look back that you can see your life is changed?

My only good result in 1997 was marrying Brooke Shields.

Chips with every damn thing. You breed babies and you eat chips with everything.

The only thing in the world you can change is yourself and that makes all the difference in the world.

Merit is never so conspicuous as when coupled with an obscure origin, just as the moon never appears so lustrous as when it emerges from a cloud.

Patrick Kenzie asking a bemused waitress for a newspaper in smalltown USA. 'It's like a homepage without a scroll button?'

You should study not only that you become a mother when your child is born, but also that you become a child.

We live in the least ugly time in history.

We should always be practical, realistic and optimistic.