I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.

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.

Do we reflect on life? Someday this life will be gone.

Laws are a dead letter without courts to expound and define their true meaning and operation.

Rejection is a big part of show business. It can be tough on anyone who doesn't have fairly good self-esteem. Especially kids, as they try to discover who they are.

Still, the word "boyfriend" starts to sound pathetic after age 30.

You mature as far as your understanding of what it's going to take, and you increase your stamina. You don't let frustration overtake you when you're looking for change.

Perl programming is an *empirical* science!

Nobody is "superior" to anybody else, only "different", that is all!

The same wind is blowing, and yet one of us may be cold and the other not.

I wish I believed I'd see my parents again, see my wife again. But I know it's not going to happen.

Do what you do so well - and so uniquely - that people can't resist telling others about you