Recommended quotes

“I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.”

“Why should I worry about dying? It's not going to happen in my lifetime!”

“Joy is not in things; it is in us”

“The more I think about language, the more it amazes me that people ever understand each other at all.”

“With all things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one.”

“How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.”

“In one kiss, you'll know all I haven't said.”

“Then make my boy think like us. Make him realize that by the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes—a transitory Yes if you like, but a Yes.”

“I suppose I shall have to live now”

“Have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time - beautiful?”

“Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.”

“I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God's help I shall succeed.”

“Let's split open our figures and place the environment inside them.”

“Literature must avoid propaganda or moralism if it truly wants to be critical and open.”

“The city becomes an ideal metaphor for how I perceive human beings.”

“The city is not just a setting, but also a character with its own voice.”

“Does literature change social reality? Perhaps not. But it reveals it, brings it into the conversation—which is no small thing. It puts it in tension with reality itself. It strips it of its masks. It takes away the official discourse, or at least makes it squirm.”

“Poets are here to disturb the status quo.”

“I have been opposed, from the beginning, to presenting ideological, political, or religious pamphleteering stances that seek to simplify the human experience into functional Manichaeism.”