44 Quotes by Eugenio Montale

Too many lives are needed to make just one.

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

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.

Man cannot produce a single work without the assistance of the slow, assiduous, corrosive worm of thought.

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.

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

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.

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.