Eugenio Montale

“I have been judged to be a pessimist but what abyss of ignorance and low egoism is not hidden in one who thinks that Man is the god of himself and that his future can only be triumphant?”

“Happiness, for you we walk on a knife edge. To the eyes you are a flickering light, to the feet, thin ice that cracks and so may no one touch you who loves you.”

“For my part, if I consider poetry as an object, I maintain that it is born of the necessity of adding a vocal sound (speech) to the hammering of the first tribal music.”

“However, poetry does not live solely in books or in school anthologies.”

“I do not go in search of poetry. I wait for poetry to visit me.”

“Narrative art, the novel, from Murasaki to Proust, has produced great works of poetry.”

“Poetry is the art which is technically within the grasp of everyone: a piece of paper and a pencil and one is ready.”

“Slowly poetry becomes visual because it paints images, but it is also musical: it unites two arts into one.”

“There is also poetry written to be shouted in a square in front of an enthusiastic crowd. This occurs especially in countries where authoritarian regimes are in power.”

“There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry.”

“This proves that great lyric poetry can die, be reborn, die again, but will always remain one of the most outstanding creations of the human soul.”

“True poetry is similar to certain pictures whose owner is unknown and which only a few initiated people know.”