The poet does not know - often he will never know - whom he really writes for.

Narrative art, the novel, from Murasaki to Proust, has produced great works of poetry.

Man cannot produce a single work without the assistance of the slow, assiduous, corrosive worm of thought.

Happiness, for you we walk on a knife edge. To the eyes you are a flickering light, to the feet, thin ice that cracks; and so may no one touch you who loves you.

Slowly poetry becomes visual because it paints images, but it is also musical: it unites two arts into one.

Against the dark background of this contemporary civilization of well-being, even the arts tend to mingle, to lose their identity.

In reality art is always for everyone and for no one.

There is also poetry written to be shouted in a square in front of an enthusiastic crowd. This occurs especially in countries where authoritarian regimes are in power.

Mass communication, radio, and especially television, have attempted, not without success, to annihilate every possibility of solitude and reflection.

This proves that great lyric poetry can die, be reborn, die again, but will always remain one of the most outstanding creations of the human soul.

Evidently the arts, all the visual arts, are becoming more democratic in the worst sense of the word.

Today not even a universal fire could make the torrential poetic production of our time disappear. But it is exactly a question of production, that is, of hand-made products which are subject to the laws of taste and fashion.

Many of today's verses are prose and bad prose.

Poetry is the art which is technically within the grasp of everyone: a piece of paper and a pencil and one is ready.

I do not go in search of poetry. I wait for poetry to visit me.

True poetry is similar to certain pictures whose owner is unknown and which only a few initiated people know.

It has often been observed that the repercussion of poetic language on prose language can be considered a decisive cut of a whip.

For my part, if I consider poetry as an object, I maintain that it is born of the necessity of adding a vocal sound (speech) to the hammering of the first tribal music.

I have been judged to be a pessimist but what abyss of ignorance and low egoism is not hidden in one who thinks that Man is the god of himself and that his future can only be triumphant?

However, poetry does not live solely in books or in school anthologies.

I have always knocked at the door of that wonderful and terrible enigma which is life.

Art is the production of objects for consumption, to be used and discarded while waiting for a new world in which man will have succeeded in freeing himself of everything, even of his own consciousness.

But poets were not considered dangerous and they were advised to exercise self-censorship. At most, poets were requested not to write at all. I took advantage of this negative liberty.

Too many lives are needed to make just one.

The poet does not know - often he will never know - whom he really writes for.

Strangely, Dante's Divine Comedy did not produce a prose of that creative height or it did so after centuries.

I am perhaps a late follower of Zoroaster and I believe that the foundation of life is built upon the struggle between the two opposing forces of Good and Evil.

There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry.

If you think it's going to rain, it will.

Set religion free, and a new humanity will begin.

Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail.

Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them - regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or economic circumstances.

It will take a long time, and certainly the West will remain the dominant civilization well into the next century, but the decline is occurring.

Given a fair wind, we will negotiate our way into the Common Market, head held high, not crawling in. Negotiations? Yes. Unconditional acceptance of whatever terms are offered us? No.

I think I've become a much better singer and a much better player. Years and years of playing a couple of hours every day will do that.

To hard necessity ones will and fancy must conform.

Almost everyone will find something in our services worth paying for.

I frankly don't care if you agree with my stand on abortion. I take that stand because no other stand is consistent with decent principles, and no other standard is consistent with the will of God.

Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.

Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think.

There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is. It is the American Dream.

I want to thank all the fans for their support over the years. Keep supporting the Knicks, we're moving in the right direction here and we will be exciting to watch and competing against the best in the NBA. Come back to the Garden for those exciting games.

How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.

And it was only released in London last week, so when I go back to England Monday or whatever, I am expecting heaps of adulation. I'm hoping there is. If that doesn't happen I will be disappointed.

I realize that much will be asked of me, yet I am resolved to accept it as a great and splendid task.

You will never know the feeling of a driver when winning a race. The helmet hides feelings that cannot be understood.

The successful establishment of a buffer zone around Fort Carson will provide an example for other bases around the country as we seek to protect the training mission of the U.S. military while preserving critical habitats on our ranges.

Most bands have a sound that they're already identified with, so for the producer it becomes a process of helping them find their muse in the studio to make a record that will not only satisfy them artistically, but will also do something in the marketplace.

I was lucky enough to occasionally break out of that racist situation that prevails in the Hollywood film production community. But it was racist then and it will always be that way. It will never be otherwise.