The word and the shadow of the word / makes a thing both itself and something else / till we are metaphors and not ourselves . . .

For every poet it is always morning in the world; history a forgotten, insomniac night. The fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world in spite of history.

Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.

Summer for prose and lemons, for nakedness and languor.

Good science and good art are always about a condition of awe. I don't think there is any other function for the poet or the scientist in the human tribe but the astonishment of the soul.

The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself.

The sigh of History rises over ruins, not over landscapes, and in the Antilles there are few ruins to sigh over, apart from the ruins of sugar estates and abandoned forts.

The future happens. No matter how much we scream.

Memory that yearns to join the centre, a limb remembering the body from which it has been severed, like those bamboo thighs of the god.

The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other’s welcome.

If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average.

I stuff my mouth with old fabric and scream until there are no sounds left under my skin.

To know shame is to be human. And to have the capacity for empathy is also to be human.

I love your cooking, honey, but sometimes I need some real food.

The Russian proposal over Iran's uranium enrichment program is considerable, but it has some problems and ambiguities to be clarified in future talks.

Luckily I stayed in shape due to wrestling.

Chicago actors are hard-nosed. They're tough on themselves and their fellow actors. They're self-demanding.

General Lee, I have no division.

We do not seek a Christ whom we have invented, for only in the real communion of the Church do we encounter the real Christ.

In the religion of Love the courtesan is a heretic; but the nun is an atheist.

Don't worry, I won't bite. At least not in the way you're afraid of.