Tomas Transtromer Quotes & Sayings

“Every abstract picture of the world is as impossible as a blueprint of a storm. Don't be ashamed because you're human: be proud! Inside you, vaults behind vaults open endlessly. You will never be finished, and that's as it should be.”

“I walk slowly into myself, through a forest of empty suits of armor.”

“A person shows himself for an instant as in a photograph but clearer and in the background something which is bigger than his shadow.”

“The language marches in step with the executioners. Therefore we must get a new language.”

“A ship's engine far away on the water expands the summer-night horizon. Both joy and sorrow swell in the dew's magnifying glass. Without really knowing, we divine; our life has a sister ship, following quietly another route. While the sun blazes behind the islands.”

“Sometimes my life opened its eyes in the dark. A feeling as if crowds drew through the streets in blindness and anxiety on the way towards a miracle, while I invisibly remain standing.”

“It's always so early in here, before the crossroads, before the irrevocable choices. Thank you for this life! Still I miss the alternatives. The sketches, all of them, want to become real.”

“I am still the place where creation does some work on itself.”

“Society's dark hull drifts further and further away. It is this place - the place of our separation, our distinction - that much of his poetry occupies.”