Unlike the novel, a short story may be, for all purposes, essential.

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.

In what life can I trust anything out of your mouth ever again?

The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.

Money was the manure of politics.

I'm a really good fine tuner.

Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art.

Business owners have made a strong case to me that they need guest workers. But none has suggested that these workers should be placed on a path to citizenship.

Follow your instincts - you never know if your ideas will work out unless you try them.

Forgiveness of sin strikes the root of all pain.

M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town, where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.

Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool no where but in's own house.