"My resistance to the general slogan 'we must present the drama and agony of our times' is a deep one. When reality surpasses the imagination in boldness, then poetic exaggeration becomes useless, and the affectation of pain becomes a mere coarsening of blood and tears. On the contrary, I think that a poet must find those spiritual powers which may counterbalance this drama and this agony. He must aim at such a resynthesis of the fragments of reality that he may pass from 'what is' to 'what may be'."
- Odysseus Elytis