That my nose and chin will touch.

One by one the more vigorous sports and exacting games fall away. Exceptional exertions are purchased only by a more pronounced and more prolonged fatigue. Muscles may relax, and feet and hands slow down; the nerve of youth and manhood may become less trusty. But painting is a friend who makes no undue demands, excites to no exhausting pursuits, keeps faithful pace even with feeble steps, and holds her canvas as a screen between us and the envious eyes of Time or the surly advance of Decrepitude. Happy are the painters, for they shall not be lonely.

Possible dementia.

I’m actually looking forward to getting older.

Generally, my hours are during the first part of the day; hardly ever in the evening. The hours nearer noon, the zenith of the day, are good for working.

This poem—I still remember the emotion which accompanied its beginnings, actually just the birth of the line “try to praise the mutilated world”; it happened in a train in Germany, I think (trains are good for inspiration, sometimes). It was for me a simple juxtaposition of two contrary deeply felt convictions.

Well, that’s the optimistic reading of it, which you are never able to apply when it happens. You can read it this way when it’s over. Rationally speaking, it’s a period that’s needed, because the danger for every poet, I think, is to write too much. So these are the blessed moments of silence, protecting you from writing too many poems, diluting you and what you have to say in a stream of banal poems. It’s necessary, but still very painful, because I just don’t know what to do if I don’t write poems. I still survive, but it is painful.

This is not an easy question—there are many poets who are my masters. Sometimes I find a poet whose one poem speaks to me with a great force, for instance Giorgios Seferis with his “The King of Asine”, a poem that sheds light on the spiritual situation of contemporary Greek (maybe not only Greek) poetry. ... Yeats with many poems, among them the incredible “Sailing to Byzantium”; a strange poem in the sense that it’s hard to believe Yeats would find in the real Byzantium these miracles of intellect he was longing for. Montale with many poems, with his constant looking for an instant of revelation and enjoying all the impediments, all the obstacles on this road. Mandel'štam who was able to blend a tragic vision of life with a strong sense of humor and a wonderful concreteness of images.

Generally, my hours are during the first part of the day; hardly ever in the evening. The hours nearer noon, the zenith of the day, are good for working.

Well, in a certain sense, the decision that I was the one who was going to be writing was already formed when I was 12 years old when I was spending those winter evenings reading Verne and other authors; I thought then that books were the best thing in the world. That this was something I wanted to do.