I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

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 matters is not the enclosure of the work within a harmonious figure, but the centrifugal force produced by it -- a plurality of language as a guarantee of a truth that is not merely partial.

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh -- at yourself.

Growing up my mother played Sarah Vaughan and Nat Cole in the house regularly.

What we buy, and pay for, is part of ourselves.

I have alternately been called an Aristocrat and a Democrat. I am neither. I am a Christocrat.

The way to ensure summer in England is to have it framed and glazed in a comfortable room.

"Adjust to changing times but sticking to unchanging principles" - committing me and all Americans to real ideals of justice and truth, no matter what difficulties faced us.

We're responsible for everything that's included in the frame. We're also responsible for what's not included in the frame. We're responsible for the way we frame the world.

Doing business in Jamaica is not easy, but it is rewarding.

I’m not a poet—I’m a drifter in the arts.