Writing is only a guided dream.

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.

Children were huge, wild creatures full of promise and hope and dirt and mischief.

When people see a legend, they call it a legend. But to be a legend, it's a lot of hard work and patience. You can't play for five or ten years and be a legend. It takes longer than that.

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

I have learned the novice can often see things that the expert overlooks. All that is necessary is not to be afraid of making mistakes, or of appearing naive.

It becomes tricky, and you start to think about the cramps rather than just actually what you're trying to do on the court, which is obviously win the match.

If you can't go around it, over it, or through it, you had better negotiate with it.

Depending on the story that you're telling, you can be relatable to everybody or nobody. I try and tell everybody's story.

The object . . . is to discover methods of condensing information concerning large groups of allied facts into brief and compendious expressions suitable for discussion.

When peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of all countries is in danger.

All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter.