“They could read him, they could study him, they could pick him apart, but they couldn’t laugh or be sad with him.”

We’re artists too, but we do a good job hiding it, don’t we?

In the current socio-political climate, he said to himself, committing suicide is absurd and redundant. Better to become an undercover poet.

I’d obviously never heard of the group, but my ignorance in literary matters is to blame for that (every book in the world is out there waiting to be read by me).

Only in chaos are we conceivable.

Reading is pleasure and happiness to be alive or sadness to be alive and above all it’s knowledge and questions.

we interpret life at moments of the deepest desperation.

The world is alive and no living thing has any remedy. That is our fortune.

Reading is more important than writing.

We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.

Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people’s ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.

We all have to die a bit every now and then and usually it’s so gradual that we end up more alive than ever. Infinitely old and infinitely alive.

Nothing is ever behind us.

When you die of sorrow it’s as if you’ve broken all the bones in your body, bruised yourself all over, cracked your skull. That’s sorrow.

You have to know how to look even if you don’t know what you’re looking for.

I realized my happiness was artificial. I felt happy because I saw the others were happy and because I knew I should feel happy, but I wasn’t really happy.

There is a time for reciting poems and a time for fists.

The trouble with boxing is that too often it ends in sadness.

I think sadness prevails in Syria now. We don’t feel anything else but sadness because we have this killing every day, whether with chemical or any other kind.

There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, ‘There now, hang on, you’ll get over it.’ Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.

The blues he sends to meet me, won’t defeat me. It won’t be long til happiness steps up to greet me.

It was so gorgeous it almost felt like sadness.

When they are gay, the waves echo their gaiety; but when they are sad, then every breaker, as it rolls, seems to bring additional sadness, and to speak to us of hopelessness and of the pettiness of all our joys.

If drinking don’t kill me, her memory will.

Sadness is more or less like a head cold – with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.