Mass communication, radio, and especially television, have attempted, not without success, to annihilate every possibility of solitude and reflection. – Eugenio Montale
Poetry is the art which is technically within the grasp of everyone: a piece of paper and a pencil and one is ready. – Eugenio Montale
There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry. – Eugenio Montale
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? – Eugenio Montale
The Jewish festival of freedom is the oldest continuously observed religious ritual in the world. Across the centuries, Passover has never lost its power to inspire the imagination of successive generations of Jews with its annually re-enacted drama of slavery and liberation. – Jonathan Sacks