Salvatore Quasimodo Quotations

The writer of stories or of novels settles on men and imitates them; he exhausts the possibilities of his characters.

After the turbulence of death, moral principles and even religious proofs are called into question.

A poet clings to his own tradition and avoids internationalism.

Poetry is also the physical self of the poet, and it is impossible to separate the poet from his poetry.

In opposition to this detachment, he finds an image of man which contains within itself man's dreams, man's illness, man's redemption from the misery of poverty - poverty which can no longer be for him a sign of the acceptance of life.

Even a polemic has some justification if one considers that my own first poetic experiments began during a dictatorship and mark the origin of the Hermetic movement.

We wrote verses that condemned us, with no hope of pardon, to the most bitter solitude.

Thus, the poet's word is beginning to strike forcefully upon the hearts of all men, while absolute men of letters think that they alone live in the real world.

Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal but which the reader recognizes as his own.

Europeans know the importance of the Resistance; it has been the shining example of the modern conscience.