“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.”

“Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility. It insists on living its own life.”

“Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.”

“In two weeks, despite these notes, I shall no longer believe in what I am experiencing now. One must leave behind a trace of this journey which memory forgets. One must, when this is impossible, write or draw without responding to the romantic solicitations of pain, without enjoying suffering like music, tieing a pen to one's foot if need be, helping the doctors who can learn nothing from laziness.”

“Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what's known as infinity.”

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

“plant it It will sproutBut forget about the rustic festivities For the explosive word falls harmlessly eternal throughthe compact generations”