My undertaking is not difficult, essentially. I should only have to be immortal to carry it out.

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.

On a cloudy night, when nothing seems above, still, there is love. Always love. For something, from someone. It's never done. Never.

...the one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death.

Boys should abstain from all use of wine until their eighteenth year for it is wrong to add fire to fire.

My photographs are a celebration of life, fun and the beautiful. They are a world that doesn't exist. A fantasy. Freedom is real. There are no rules. The life I wish I was living.

Science fiction is the agent provocateur of literature.

Just because it's automatic doesn't mean it works.

Nothing makes a man so selfish as work.

Confidence is when you stand over a shot and know you're going to make it because you've done it time and time again.

The solution to our water problems is more rain.

I love the urgency of what we do. I like the battles that take place, the jousting.