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

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.

Deciding which ideas to save and which ideas to discard is one of society's most important tasks.

Architecture is a discourse; everything is a discourse. Fashion discourse is actually a micro-discourse, because it's centered around the body. It is the most rapidly developing form of discourse.

The box office has become global. I think that factors in to the question of how to portray different ethnicities and cultures.

I'm just afraid I'm gonna miss it all... being married... being a mother.

Not only does investing in your infrastructure provide very good construction jobs, at the end of the project, you have something.

What I couldn't help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one than I'd learned in seven years or so of trying to write criticism.

What is music for? It's to make you feel good.

Most books reviews aren't very well-written. They tend to be more about the reviewer than the book.

Do theater. Because you'll develop a craft that you'll always have. It'll give you a chance to really learn how to act and you won't go into the world with a few measly tricks that will only carry you so far.

Scientists are skeptics. It's unfortunate that the word 'skeptic' has taken on other connotations in the culture involving nihilism and cynicism. Really, in its pure and original meaning, it's just thoughtful inquiry.

That whole business of having two homes, and that divided loyalty bind that kids get into. I mean, my parents were divorced - though I was adult - but I still grappled with being responsible to both of them.

Government is just spending too much money.

Sometimes I say things that I think are obviously sarcastic and people take them quite literally.

It's bad taste to be wise all the time, like being at a perpetual funeral.

Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad. But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.

I wanted to go to Portland because it's a really good book town.

A Fiat Panda, it's the best car in the world.

Writing is showbusiness for shy people. That's how I see it.

By that time I was hooked on a career in academic research instead of one in the pharmaceutical industry that I had originally considered in deciding to get a PhD.

I respect religion in general. I respect a lot, but I don't follow any religion. You know, I just follow my personal connection with God. For me, God is inside my heart and is inside everyone's heart.

God has put within our lives meanings and possibilities that quite outrun the limits of mortality.

Your body is a temple, but only if you treat it as one.

Any film you make is a crap shoot.