“حين كان يضحك كان أعضاء مجلس الشيوخ الموقرون ينفجرون بالضحكوحين كان يبكي كان الأطفال يموتون في الشوارع”

“كان الناس الذين أمضوا يوماً هادئاً في عمان ينفجرون ضاحكين حين يسمعون إذاعة القاهرة تقول: "قتال بين الجنود في عمان والدم في الشوارع إلى الركب!”

“A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.”

“And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom.”

“A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.”

“Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts; and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.”

“But if a stranger in the train asks me my occupation, I never answer "writer" for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer "poetry" would embarrass us both, for we both know that nobody can earn a living simply by writing poetry.”