I am not sure of anything, I know nothing . . . can you imagine that I don't even know the date of my own death?

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.

What alarms me most is the fact that, even when God has now raised up a voice to speak on these issues, many sincerely believe that I am in error or at worst that I am doing something utterly wrong

You will accomplish more by kind words and a courteous manner than by anger or sharp rebuke which should never be used except in necessity.

If you know that something is true and just, and you give up, thats when you fail.

You're a leader. It's your job to keep your passion hot. Do whatever you have to do, read whatever you have to read, go wherever you have to go to stay fired up. And don't apologize to anybody.

What I thought was unreal now, for me, seems in some ways to be more real than what I think to be real, which seems now to be unreal

When we all can worship from our own kind of pew, then we shall be free.

It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal.

This was something sure to be crammed full of warm secrets, like an antique clock built when peace filled the world.

When you're a winner you're always happy, but if you're happy as a loser you'll always be a loser.

If we fear nothing and radiate love, we can expect good things to come.