“Behind all art is an element of desire…Love of life, of existence, love of another human being, love of human beings is in some way behind all art.”

The more I live, the more I think, two people together is a miracle.

And that we can deflect words by trivialization, of course, but also by ritualized respect, or we can let them enter our souls and mix with the juices of our minds.

The materials are here for the deepest mutuality and the most painful estrangement.

What I believe in and what my government represents are not the same thing.

Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.

These scars bear witness but whether to repair or to destruction I no longer know.

It is unstable and threatening as the earth is not; it spawns new life daily, yet swallows up lives; it is changeable like the moon, unregulated, yet indestructible and eternal.

The unconscious wants truth, as the body does. The complexity and fecundity of dreams come from the complexity and fecundity of the unconscious struggling to fulfill that desire. The complexity and fecundity of poetry come from the same struggle.

Practicing till strengthand accuracy became one with the daringto leap into transcendence, take the chance of breaking down in the wild arpeggioor faulting the full sentence of the fugue.

Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.

It’s exhilarating to be alive in a time of awakening consciousness; it can also be confusing, disorienting, and painful.

… this world gives no room to be what we dreamt of being

One of the great functions of art is to help us imagine what it is like to be not ourselves, what it is like to be someone or something else.

Lying is done with words and also with silence.

I do not think [poetry] is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary.

A language is a map of our failures.

There are still many great surviving talents: Stevie Winwood. Another great talent is Stevie Wonder.

It is to wonder about the world, to understand the nature of people and, most importantly, to be shared with another, old or young, known or unknown.

It is one thing to touch a flame and know it is hot, but quite another to jump into that flame and be consumed by it.

That vie with one another (“qui rivalisent à l’envi,” Fr.), by the increase of their armies and the improvement of their engines of murder (“engins meurtriers”, Fr).

We need to find another way or another shape or an allegory or something that tells us more.

I don’t expect that because I was successful in one field that I will then get a ride of passage into another.

I don’t watch my own films. There is little time; I’d rather see another film.

You can buy a good pasta but when you cook it yourself it has another feeling.