If I were asked to name the chief event in my life, I should say my father's 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.

This is not the thing I want. But this is the thing that I need.

Art is that which comes to a man, and stands between himself and an implacable witness - the work.

Now, as I've gotten older I've been able to write more quickly. Sometimes I get in the space of something and I can do a lot in a day.

I cannot let this opportunity pass without placing on record how much I have enjoyed my cricket with Kent.

I try to work the hardest I can without burning myself out.

I stick to my own type when I go out, and I don't make friends with people just because they're celebrities.

People are not machines, but in all situations where they are given the opportunity, they will act like machines.

The U.S. incarcerates more of its people than any nation in the world, or any nation in history.

Working inspires inspiration. Keep working. If you succeed, keep working. If you fail, keep working. If you are interested, keep working. If you are bored, keep working.

The chaos can act as a magnifier of quantum fluctuations so that they can produce sizable effects in the world around us. But we know that that can happen often