Talent is long patience.

Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.

It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.

Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.

I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

Well, I could do it for a day, but I wouldn't want to be a teenager again. I really wouldn't.

The experience of love and the experience of death destroy the illusion of our self-sufficiency. The two are closely connected, and to become fully human we must experience both of them.

The athlete of today is not an athlete alone. He's the center of a team - doctors, scientists, coaches, agents and so on.

Philippine education is in crisis

There is no one who would have me - I can't cook.

Contrary to popular opinion, things don't go stale particularly fast in the art world.

A writer's self-consciousness, for which he is much scorned, is really a mode of interestedness, that inevitably turns outward.

... the monotonous beauty of wealth.

I wouldn't trade anything for my story now.

You can't make someone feel good about themselves until you feel good about yourself.