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What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.

I think that as a poet, I am always concerned about history and baring witness to history. But so often, it's through the research that I do, the reading.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

Everyone has ways of trying to find a way to memorise our past. There's something very poetic about that.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

I was thinking of writing a little foreword saying that history is, after all, based on people's recollections, which change with time.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I'm using my own memory, and I'm using my collective memory.

History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.

Poetry is this gorgeous, complex history rendered in verse and song, a blueprint that can lead you back into the world after you've walked into air.

History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.