“The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.”

“A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.”

“Looking up at the stars, I know quite wellThat, for all they care, I can go to hell,But on earth indifference is the leastWe have to dread from man or beast.”

“Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links, Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks, Under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.”

“You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, as surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading, wear that same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-object look.”

“Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered.”

“Few people take an interest in Iceland, but in those few the interest is passionate.”