“You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language?”

“In an isolated region from Iran there is this wall tower, windowless, doorless, not very tall. In its only room with arched walls and the stamped earth as its floor, there’s a wooden table and a bench. In this round cell a man that looks like me is writing in signs that i don’t understand a long poem about a man who in another round cell is writing a poem about a man in another round cell. Endless series; nobody will ever read what prisoners write. ”

“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.”

“Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.”

“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.”

“Poem Written in a Copy of BeowulfAt various times, I have asked myself what reasonsmoved me to study, while my night came down,without particular hope of satisfaction,the language of the blunt-tongued Anglo-Saxons.Used up by the years, my memoryloses its grip on words that I have vainlyrepeated and repeated. My life in the same wayweaves and unweaves its weary history.Then I tell myself: it must be that the soulhas some secret, sufficient way of knowingthat it is immortal, that its vast, encompassingcircle can take in all, can accomplish all.Beyond my anxiety, beyond this writing,the universe waits, inexhaustible, inviting.”

“When you reach my age, you realize you couldn't have done things very much better or much worse than you did them in the first place.”