“Out of Dostoevsky: Kafka. Out of Tolstoy: Margaret Mitchell.(in conversation, explaining his dislike for Tolstoy)”

“For a writer, only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.”

“What concerns me is that man, unable to articulate, to express himself adequately, reverts to action. Since the vocabulary of action is limited, as it were, to his body, he is bound to act violently, extending his vocabulary with a weapon where there should have been an adjective.”

“What gets left of a man amounts to a part. To his spoken part. To a part of speech”

“... Now to die of griefwould mean, I'm afraid, to die belatedly, while latecomersare unwelcome, particularly in the future. ...”

“If one's fated to be born in Caesar's Empire, let him live aloof, provincial, by the seashore...”

“Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production.”