"I have been blind for many years, but I have seen more than most men."

"I can do nothing to change the past, but I can do a great deal to change the future."

"Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger."

"The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library... Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book."

"Everything that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art."