“A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses. ”

“The poet, by composing poems, uses a language that is neither dead nor living, that few people speak, and few people understand … We are the servants of an unknown force that lives within us, manipulates us, and dictates this language to us.”

“The poet doesn't invent. He listens. ”

“If a poet has a dream, it is not of becoming famous, but of being believed.”

“The purity of a revolution can last a fortnight. That is why a poet, the revolutionary of the soul, limits himself to the about-turns of the mind. ”

“It is in this way that a war is disastrous. If it does not kill, it transmits to some an energy alien to their own resources; to others it permits what the law forbids and accustoms them to short cuts. It artificially glorifies ingenuity, pity, daring. A whole younger generation believes itself to be sublime and collapses when it has to draw on itself for patriotism and fate.”

“I only fear the death of others. For me, true death is that of the people I love”