The poem is lonely. It is lonely and en route. Its author stays with it. Does this very fact not place the poem already here, at its inception, in the encounter, in the mystery of encounter?

Only truthful hands write true poems. I cannot see any basic difference between a handshake and a poem.

Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss.

A nothing we were, are, shall remain, flowering: the nothing--, the no one's rose.

Reality is not simply there, it does not simply exist: it must be sought out and won.

Poetry is a sort of homecoming.

Don't sign your name between worlds, surmount the manifold of meanings, trust the tearstain, learn to live.

There's nothing in the world for which a poet will give up writing, not even he is a Jew and the language of his poems is German.

We are told that when Hölderlin went 'mad,' he constantly repeated, 'Nothing is happening to me, nothing is happening to me.'

German poetry is going in a very different direction from French poetry.... Its language has become more sober, more factual. It distrusts "beauty." It tries to be truthful.

They've healed me to pieces.

To fill the hour──that is happiness.

I want something new. I want something I’ve never seen or heard or imagined. I want a spark. I want to be ignited. I want my flesh scorched and imagination set ablaze.

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

You have to tell guys to ask you on a date. Smile when you do it - however that works, I'm not 'Cosmo.' But yeah - not a lot of people know how to 'court' anymore, sorry.

The Republican Party: a few million gun-toting, Armageddon-ready Baptists.

Prayer is the forerunner of mercy. Turn to sacred history, and you will find that scarecely ever did a great mercy come to this world unheralded by supplication.

If there's one thing I'm good at, it's putting people in their place.

I'm not a pessimist, even though I do think awful things are going to happen.

Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.

Architecture is the will of the age conceived in spatial terms.