One should write only those books from whose absence one suffers. In short: the ones you want on your own desk.

Don't you know no one can escapethe power of creatures reaching outwith breath alone?

I opened my veins. Unstoppablylife spurts out with no remedy.Now I set out bowls and plates.Every bowl will be shallow.Every plate will be small.And overflowing their rims,into the black earth, to nourishthe rushes unstoppablywithout cure, gushespoetry ...

There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?

Wings are freedom only when they are wide open in flight. On one's back they are a heavy weight.

(Everyday life is like a sack: with holes. And you carry it anyway.)

I want to sleep with you, fall asleep and sleep. That magnificent folk word, how deep, how true, how unequivocal, how exactly what it says. Just – sleep. And nothing more. No, another thing: and know right into the deepest sleep that it is you. And more: how your heart sounds. And – kiss your heart.

Somewhere in the night ahuman being is drowning.

The eclipses ofpoets are not foretold in the calender.

For the way of the comets is the poet's way.

I am a moonbeam free to go whenever I choose.