What a writer wants to do is not what he does.

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.

If you understand or if you don'tIf you believe or if you doubtThere's a universal justiceAnd the eyes of truthAre always watching you

The library is a symbol of freedom.

although I love a rich life, I hate an overcrowded life. I believe in rumination and lose half the beauty of all things when I am deprived of the time to ruminate.

I think beauty has a lot to do with class. A bit of mystery. Rarity.

To make a mountain out of a mole-hill.

Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.

I went through bits of the 60s and thought myself a bit of a hippy.

I have no idea what the audience makes of me.

I use to think all road racers were nuts. You know racing around a track at that speed.

If I'm president, America will be very strong.