“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

I never wish to be easily defined. I’d rather float over other people’s minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person.

I am a cage, in search of a bird.

Sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless man the most guilty.

This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.

In a way, you are poetry material; You are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out. Words burst in your essence and you carry their dust in the pores of your ethereal individuality.

The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.

You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.

The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when I write.

I am in chains. Don’t touch my chains.

I am dirty, Milena, endlessly dirty, that is why I make such a fuss about cleanliness. None sing as purely as those in deepest hell; it is their singing we take for the singing of angels.

I need solitude for my writing; not ‘like a hermit’ – that wouldn’t be enough – but like a dead man.

It’s only because of their stupidity that they’re able to be so sure of themselves.

There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe, but not for us.

The limited circle is pure.

All language is but a poor translation.

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.

I often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.

The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.

I’m wondering what to read next.

There is no friend as loyal as a book.

It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books.