Quotes from Eugenio Montale

Slowly poetry becomes visual because it paints images, but it is also musical: it unites two arts into one.

Evidently the arts, all the visual arts, are becoming more democratic in the worst sense of the word.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

I have been judged to be a pessimist but what abyss of ignorance and low egoism is not hidden in one who thinks that Man is the god of himself and that his future can only be triumphant?

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 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.

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

in questo seguitare una muraglia che ha in cima cocci aguzzi di bottiglia

Your arms, so wonderful! When I die, come embrace me, But take off your sweater first.

Charity belongs to nobody. Its image, a soap bubble, shines for an instant, bursts, and never knows who blew it.

The hermit crab doesn't look too closely, he just crawls into a shell that isn't his. But remains a hermit. That's my hang-up: if I leave my shell, I can't crawl into yours.

clowns got up as poets arrogant bureaucrats pedantic criers you are the standard bearers carrying faded colors being a poet isnt a matter of pride it is only an error of nature a burden to be shouldered with fear

You ask if everything dissolves like this in a thin haze of memories, if in this torpid hour or the breaker's sigh every destiny's fulfilled. I'd like to say no, that the moment when you'll pass out of time is rushing toward you; maybe only those who want to become infinite, and, who knows, you can do it; I cannot.

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

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

I am perhaps a late follower of Zoroaster and I believe that the foundation of life is built upon the struggle between the two opposing forces of Good and Evil.

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

Mass communication, radio, and especially television, have attempted, not without success, to annihilate every possibility of solitude and reflection.