“Born in a cellar, and living in a garret.”

“Words … are little houses, each with its cellar and garret. Common sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in ‘foreign commerce’ on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who are never dreamers. To go upstairs in the word house is to withdraw step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream, it is losing oneself in the distant corridors of an obscure etymology, looking for treasures that cannot be found in words. To mount and descend in the words themselves—this is a poet’s life. To mount too high or descend too low is allowed in the case of poets, who bring earth and sky together.”

“When I was a beggarly boy,
And lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend nor a toy,
But I had Aladdin's lamp.”

“Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch”

“Like searching at midnight in a dark cellar for a black cat that isn’t there.”

“We are born to live, we are born to understand, we are born to carry a cursed pattern and be transformed by pain.”

“Born to lose. Live to win.”

“Like the cellar-growing vine is the Christian who lives in the darkness and bondage of fear. But let him go forth, with the liberty of God, into the light of love, and he will be like the plant in the field, healthy, robust, and joyful.”

“I know the reason of being born on this world and the happiness of being born and living on this world.”

“Grace / to be born and live as variously as possible”