The fact is that all writers create their precursors. Their work modifies our conception of the past, just as it is bound to modify the future.

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.

The only thing I envy in young people is their livers.

There was certainly an old law code which stands behind the earliest form of Deuteronomy. Presumably that is what was lost.

I'm mostly a keep-to-myself kind of guy, but you slowly find yourself getting folded into the musical tapestry.

My Paradise: With Christ. Not sinning. No pain. New earth. Precious in that order.

Abandon fancy theologies and imaginary ideas and do some ordinary daily work... {Engage in this work with} unswerving kindness and unending patience.

Our dreams are waiting for US... to come true!

From the pine tree, learn of the pine tree; And from the bamboo, of the bamboo

If I had a dollar for every time I smiled secretly having you in my mind I think my bank account would show up millions.

A genuine odyssey is not about piling up experiences. It is a deeply felt, risky, unpredictable tour of the soul.

Normality is the Great Neurosis of civilization.