Eugenio Montale

"Mass communication, radio, and especially television, have attempted, not without success, to annihilate every possibility of solitude and reflection."

"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."