My readers at that time were still men of letters; but there had to be other people waiting to read my poems.

A poet clings to his own tradition and avoids internationalism.

According to them, the poet is confined to the provinces with his mouth broken on his own syllabic trapeze.

Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own.

The Resistance is a moral certainty, not a poetic one. The true poet never uses words in order to punish someone. His judgment belongs to a creative order; it is not formulated as a prophetic scripture.

War, I have always said, forces men to change their standards, regardless of whether their country has won or lost.

My readers at that time were still men of letters; but there had to be other people waiting to read my poems.

We wrote verses that condemned us, with no hope of pardon, to the most bitter solitude.

The antagonism between the poet and the politician has generally been evident in all cultures.

Poetry is also the physical self of the poet, and it is impossible to separate the poet from his poetry.

In opposition to this detachment, he finds an image of man which contains within itself man's dreams, man's illness, man's redemption from the misery of poverty - poverty which can no longer be for him a sign of the acceptance of life.

Europeans know the importance of the Resistance; it has been the shining example of the modern conscience.

The writer of stories or of novels settles on men and imitates them; he exhausts the possibilities of his characters.

Religious poetry, civic poetry, lyric or dramatic poetry are all categories of man's expression which are valid only if the endorsement of formal content is valid.

An exact poetic duplication of a man is for the poet a negation of the earth, an impossibility of being, even though his greatest desire is to speak to many men, to unite with them by means of harmonious verses about the truths of the mind or of things.

The poet does not fear death, not because he believes in the fantasy of heroes, but because death constantly visits his thoughts and is thus an image of a serene dialogue.

Religious power, which, as I have already said, frequently identifies itself with political power, has always been a protagonist of this bitter struggle, even when it seemingly was neutral.

The poet's other readers are the ancient poets, who look upon the freshly written pages from an incorruptible distance. Their poetic forms are permanent, and it is difficult to create new forms which can approach them.

Thus, the poet's word is beginning to strike forcefully upon the hearts of all men, while absolute men of letters think that they alone live in the real world.

As the poet has expected, the alarms now are sounded, for - and it must be said again - the birth of a poet is always a threat to the existing cultural order, because he attempts to break through the circle of literary castes to reach the center.

At the point when continuity was interrupted by the first nuclear explosion, it would have been too easy to recover the formal sediment which linked us with an age of poetic decorum, of a preoccupation with poetic sounds.

He passes from lyric to epic poetry in order to speak about the world and the torment in the world through man, rationally and emotionally. The poet then becomes a danger.

Even a polemic has some justification if one considers that my own first poetic experiments began during a dictatorship and mark the origin of the Hermetic movement.

The poet's spoken discourse often depends on a mystique, on the spiritual freedom that finds itself enslaved on earth.

From the night, his solitude, the poet finds day and starts a diary that is lethal to the inert. The dark landscape yields a dialogue.

After the turbulence of death, moral principles and even religious proofs are called into question.

Lives of great men oft remind us as we o'er their pages turn, That we too may leave behind us - Letters that we ought to burn.

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

I get letters from readers who say that they have always hated reading, but somebody suggested one of my books, they actually finished the book and enjoyed it, and they're going on to read another book. I'm thrilled that they have figured out that reading is fun.

I like the storytelling and reading the letters, the long-distance dedications. Anytime in radio that you can reach somebody on an emotional level, you're really connecting.

Out all of these zillions of letters, one of the first ones that came was, as it turned out from Johnny Carson within the last five or six weeks of his life. I had worked with him. He lost a son who had worked for me.

I started getting letters from college in the tenth grade.

You know these love letters mix with whisky, just don't light a match when you kiss me.

Writings scatter to the winds blank checks in an insane charge. And were they not such flying leaves, there would be no purloined letters.

But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography.

My readers at that time were still men of letters; but there had to be other people waiting to read my poems.

I have asked myself once or twice lately what was my natural bent. I have no doubt at all: It is to look at each day for the evil of that day and have a go at it, and that is why I have never failed to have an acute interest in each morning's letters.

Walking is the natural recreation for a man who desires not absolutely to suppress his intellect but to turn it out to play for a season. All great men of letters have therefore been enthusiastic walkers.

Aside from sales, the letters from readers have been primarily positive.

Judging from the letters I've received from obviously feeble-minded persons who wish I would write another These Old Shades, it ought to sell like hot cakes.

There are people who would rather choke than go see my movies. They write me letters all the time.

When I first began to combine letters other than Hebrew, I read every book in German that came my way, and from these I certainly received according to the nature of my soul.

When an actor has money, he doesn't send letters, but telegrams.

Writers spend three years rearranging 26 letters of the alphabet. It's enough to make you lose your mind day by day.

To be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential to being a sound, believing Christian.

More negatives write than call. It's a cheap shot for me to go on the air with the critical letters or E-mail I get because the reaction of the listeners is always an instantaneous expression of sympathy for me and contempt for the poor critic.

I had never thought of myself as a dramatist, and, for really good technical results, the thought came too late: a man of letters has become too wordy to write economically for the stage.

It's not the most intellectual job in the world, but I do have to know the letters.

Most well-known serial killers have victims numbering in the dozens, have sent taunting letters to the police or have done bizarre things to the bodies.