Eugenio Montale

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Against the dark background of this contemporary civilization of well-being, even the arts tend to mingle, to lose their identity.”

“It has often been observed that the repercussion of poetic language on prose language can be considered a decisive cut of a whip.”

“But poets were not considered dangerous and they were advised to exercise self-censorship. At most, poets were requested not to write at all. I took advantage of this negative liberty.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“The poet does not know - often he will never know - whom he really writes for.”

“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.”

“I have always knocked at the door of that wonderful and terrible enigma which is life.”

“E andando nel sole che abbagliasentire con triste meravigliacom'è tutta la vita e il suo travaglioin questo seguitare una muragliache ha in cima cocci aguzzi di bottiglia.”

“Many of today's verses are prose and bad prose.”

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

“In reality art is always for everyone and for no one.”

“Art is the production of objects for consumption, to be used and discarded while waiting for a new world in which man will have succeeded in freeing himself of everything, even of his own consciousness.”

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

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