Antonio Porchia Quotes
What we pay for with our lives never costs too much.
Porchia, Antonio. Voices. Translated by W.S. Merwin, Copper Canyon Press, 2003.
This extreme position illustrates how a politician, trying to defend a particular position can get carried away and lose rational sense of balance. The air we breath is free and quite valuable—essential really. The exercise of most of our political rights is without charge. Legitimate religions do not require payment.
Antonio Porchia was an Argentinian poet. He was born in Conflenti, Italy, but, after the death of his father in 1900, moved to Argentina. He wrote a Spanish book entitled Voces ("Voices"), a book of aphorisms. It has since been translated into Italian and into English (by W.S. Merwin, Copper Canyon Press, 2003), French, and German. A very influential, yet extremely succinct writer, he has been a cult author for a number of renowned figures of contemporary literature and thought such as André Breton, Jorge Luis Borges, Don Paterson, Roberto Juarroz and Henry Miller, amongst others. Some critics have paralleled his work to Japanese haiku and found many similarities with a number of Zen schools of thought.
