Translations are a partial and precious documentation of the changes the text suffers.

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.

Lord of lords!

God design of you is divine act.

My first clue time travel could be possible was in the barber's chair the day before my girlfriend's funeral.

In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others.

We need to spend a trillion dollars rebuilding our schools, our roads, our basic science and research here in the United States.

Most people hear me do all these freestyles and never hear me tell a story.

Everyone has problems. When you think you want to end your life, maybe you could be there for someone else and can learn something.

Very small investments can release the infinite potential that lies in all of us.

I think that writers are, at best, outsiders to the society they inhabit. They have a kind of detachment, or try to have.

Medicine has made all its progress during the past fifty years. ... How many operations that are now in use were known fifty years ago?-they were not operations, they were executions.