No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist.

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.

Be a craftsman in speech that thou mayest be strong, for the strength of one is the tongue, and speech is mightier than all fighting.

When the people whom we love the most leave us, we start learning to live with the shadows they have left inside us.

See, that's the problem with putting too much stock in the old days. You remember all the GOOD stuff, but you forget about the time you got spanked by your best friend's mom.

In some way, people believe that if you are permeable, if you are a good listener, you don't have the quality of somebody with a firm attitude. This is what, fundamentally, I got from my mother.

You know it's hard for me to, like, act the way I've been acting. And, like, being, like, nice to everyone. And I think I deserve to be acknowledged for that.

It's just a horrible thing to keep saying to a woman, do you want a baby inside you? I mean, it's creepy.

India must protect her primary industries even as a mother protects her children against the whole world without being hostile to it.

Intelligence is required to be able to know that a man knows not.

What signifies the sound of words in prayer without the affection of the heart, and a sedulous application of the proper means that may naturally lead us to such an end?

Nothing is taboo if you have an angle on it.