“Moral writing is boring.”

“To live is to war with trolls in heart and soul.To write is to sit in judgement on oneself.”

“De store seire er aldri vunnet i det første slag.”

“If a serious statement is defined as one that may be made in terms of waking life, poetry will never rise to the level of seriousness. It lies beyond seriousness, on that more primitive and original level where the child, the animal, the savage, and the seer belong, in the region of dream, enchantment, ecstasy, laughter. To understand poetry we must be capable of donning the child's soul like a magic cloak and of forsaking man's wisdom for the child's.”

“Vertrouwen hebben in anderen zegt vooral veel over hoe stabiel je zelf bent.”

“It takes vast willpower, luck, and skill to be the first. But it takes a gigantic heart to be number two.”

“The May sunshine makes both the trolls and the elves disappear, he thought. They burst like soap bubbles. Only human beings remain, for a little while. We are a brief song beneath the sky, laughter in the wind that ends in a sigh. Then we too are gone.”