When people say that poetry is merely a luxury for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn't be read much at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers - a language powerful enough to say how it is.
I say I'm in love with her. What does that mean? It means I review my future and my past in the light of this feeling. It is though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read. Wordlessly, she explains me to myself. Like genius, she is ignorant of what she does.
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. What then kills love? Only this: Neglect.
Only the impossible is worth the effort.
It's not the one thing nor the other that leads to madness, but the space in between.
History is not a suicide note, it is a record of our survival.
It may be that there was no reason or purpose, for mankind must always be finding reasons where there are none, and comfort in a purpose that hardly exists.
If there's one thing I can't stand it's a hero without a cause. People like that just make trouble so that they can solve it.
Unhappiness is selfish, grief is selfish. For whom are the tears?
How is it that one day life is orderly and you are content, a little cynical perhaps but on the whole just so, and then without warning you find the solid floor is a trapdor and you are now in another place whose geography is uncertain and whose customs are strange?