16 Quotes by Odysseus Elytis

You'll come to learn a great deal if you study the Insignificant in depth

Coincidence, when raised to a symbol, occurs with mathematical precision at the most crucial moment, even for the squarest of minds. A moment the rest of us call higher will, Fate’s gesture, something like that.

I like to begin where winds shake the first branch.

Forced relations between two things that superficially appear foreign create a new, instantaneous state. Authentic poetry asks nothing more. A kinship completely nonexistent moments ago was created by the poet’s authority, just as it might have been created in life by the authority of chance.

In the final analysis, roses are nothing but tears. Nothing but the whistle of the leaving train and the breach of a promise. Sorrow, too, is nothing but an evening leaning on April.

Poetry should express the apex, should constitute a kind of pioneering outpost in the unexplored area of life, should precede other arts in the depiction of sensitivity. It should be the word and sword intervening in the spirit, so that matter, docile, can follow. Creation, especially poetic, is above all a result.

This is why I write. Because poetry begins where death is robbed of the last word.