Stephen

“I do not turn to history to draw from it an easy lesson of hope, but to confront my experience with that of others, to acquire something I might call universal compassion, and also a sense of responsibility, responsibility for the state of my conscience.”
― Zbigniew Herbert, The Collected Prose, 1948-1998

“As Borges has taught us, all the books in the library are contemporary. Great poems are like granaries: they are always ready to enlarge their store.”
― William H. Gass, Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation

“Opium resembles religion insofar as a magician resembles Jesus.”
― Jean Cocteau

“Very early on, near the beginning of my writing life, I came to believe that I had to seize on some object outside of literature. Writing as a sylistic exercise seemed barren to me. Poetry as the art of the word made me yawn. I also understood that I couldn't sustain myself very long on the poems of others. I had to go out from myself and literature, look around in the world and lay hold of other spheres of reality.”
― Zbigniew Herbert, The Collected Prose, 1948-1998