“I only fear the death of others. For me, true death is that of the people I love.”

I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.

It is difficult to live without opium after having known it because it is difficult, after knowing opium, to take earth seriously. And unless one is a saint, it is difficult to live without taking earth seriously.

Poetry is indispensable – if I only knew what for.

I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.

The extreme limit of wisdom, that’s what the public calls madness.

You have comfort. You don’t have luxury. And don’t tell me that money plays a part. The luxury I advocate has nothing to do with money. It cannot be bought. It is the reward of those who have NO Fear or Discomfort.

When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don’t. I have a knack for disturbing.

The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.

A true photographer is as rare as a true poet or a true painter.

Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.

The public is never pleased with what we do, wanting always a copy of what we have done.

The job of the poet (a job which can’t be learned) consists of placing those objects of the visible world which have become invisible due to the glue of habit, in an unusual position which strikes the soul and gives them a tragic force.

Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.

We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?

Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility… It insists on living its own life.

Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.

When my body dies one day or the next, I drift away from it, merge with the air, and with a divine timing I travel back into another human form and continue to discover the life I am.

The memories won’t die but I will.

I do not fear death. But I do, a deathbed regret. Life is a blink of an eye. One day forever closed, lest you forget.

To be struck with a force you cannot match if not death it must be love.

The death of imagination is the end of all possibility.

Arrogance can lead to death.

You may travel far and wide but never will you find the boundaries of the soul.

Last winter was colder than usual. Maybe it was the warmth that died with the millions of lives covid stole, or maybe it was the way close people betrayed me and left a gaping hole.