35 Quotes by Salvatore Quasimodo

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.

Religious poetry, civic poetry, lyric or dramatic poetry are all categories of man's expression which are valid only if the endorsement of formal content is valid.

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

According to them, the poet is confined to the provinces with his mouth broken on his own syllabic trapeze.

My readers at that time were still men of letters; but there had to be other people waiting to read my poems.

An exact poetic duplication of a man is for the poet a negation of the earth, an impossibility of being, even though his greatest desire is to speak to many men, to unite with them by means of harmonious verses about the truths of the mind or of things.

The poet's other readers are the ancient poets, who look upon the freshly written pages from an incorruptible distance. Their poetic forms are permanent, and it is difficult to create new forms which can approach them.

War, I have always said, forces men to change their standards, regardless of whether their country has won or lost.

The poet's spoken discourse often depends on a mystique, on the spiritual freedom that finds itself enslaved on earth.