We are on earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.

Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.

What the mass media offer is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible.

Poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its saying.

Music is the best means we have of digesting time.