Love is a fire/It burns everyone/It disfigures everyone/It is the world’s excuse for being ugly.

You who wish to conquer pain, you must learn what makes one kind.

My two great heroes are W. B. Yeats and Federico Garcia Lorca.

And this is our time-keeper, with a passion for percussion.

Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free.

From what I gather in reading ancient texts, right up to the present, human beings have always been confronted by the same kinds of problems. I think that this world is not a realm that admits to a solution. That isn’t what this world is about. It’s a different kind of activity that we have here. We have to deal with good and evil continually. With joy and despair, with all the antinomies, all the opposites and contraries. That’s what our life is about. We can’t abdicate that.

Blessed be the covenant of love between what is hidden and what is revealed.

I loved you when you opened like a lily to the heat; you see I’m just another snowman standing in the rain and sleet who loved you with his frozen love, his second hand physique, with all he is and all he was a thousand kisses deep.

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking. Everybody knows that the captain lied.

I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree.

I don’t think there’s any difference between a crush and profound love. I think the experience is that you dissolve your sentries and your battalions for a moment and you really do see that there is this unfixed free-flowing energy of emotion and thought between people, that it really is there.

The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it’s overturned the order of the soul.

Do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory.

I don’t want to be a star, merely dying.

Remember when I moved in you and the holy dove was moving too, and every breath we drew was, ‘Hallelujah’.

And here you are hurried, And here you are gone; And here is the love, That it’s all built upon.

God willing I would like to keep on going. I listened to [blues singer] Alberta Hunter in New York a few years ago. She was eighty-two at the time and it was really wonderful to hear the experience in this woman’s voice. You knew that she knew what she was talking about and when she said ‘God bless you’ at the end of her set, you really did feel blessed.

I’m planning a catastrophe.

First of all nothing will happen and a little later nothing will happen again.

I’ve got beautiful reviews for all my books, and I’m very well thought of in the tiny circles that know me, but I’m really starving.

A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love.

The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines.

Poetry is a verdict, not an occupation.

We should row with both oars: There’s the intellect and the emotions.

I’ll never come through this alone.

Listen to the one who has not been wounded, the one who says, ‘It is not good that man should be alone.’ Recall your longing to the loneliness where it was born, so that when she appears, she will stand before you, not against you. Refine your longing here, in the small silver music of her preparations, under the low-built shelter of repentance.

I told you when I came I was a stranger.

When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you.

When we are touched by a song, it is because the artist cannot hide himself.

I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm, your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy, golden storm, yes many loved before us, I know we are not new, in city and in forest they smiled like me and you, but now it’s come to distances and both of us must try, your eyes are soft with sorrow, Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye.

Raise a million filters and the rain will not be clean, until the longing for it be refined in deep confession.

In dreams the truth is learned that all good works are done in the absence of a caress.

I don’t really understand that process called reincarnation but if there is such a thing I’d like to come back as my daughter’s dog

When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you. . . It’s like taking a drink of cold water when you are thirsty. Every tastebud on your tongue, every molecule in your body says thank you.

He knew that hair couldn’t feel; he kissed her hair.

At a certain point, if you still have your marbles and are not faced with serious financial challenges, you have a chance to put your house in order. It’s a cliche, but it’s underestimated as an analgesic on all levels. Putting your house in order, if you can do it, is one of the most comforting activities, and the benefits of it are incalculable.

I’m afraid to live any place but in expectation. I’m no life–risk.

A heavy burden lifted from my soul, I heard that love was out of my control.

We are not mad. We are human. We want to love, and someone must forgive us for the paths we take to love, for the paths are many and dark, and we are ardent and cruel in our journey.

Don’t call yourself a secret, unless you mean to keep it.

Music is the emotional life of most people.

I wish I could say everything in one word. I hate all the things that can happen between the beginning of a sentence and the end.

The basic function of popular music is to create an environment for courting, lovemaking, and doing the dishes. It’s useful because it addresses the heart in the midst of all these activities, and it will always be useful in this very important way.

I didn’t fall in love of course it’s never up to you but she was walking back and forth and i was passing through.

I have tried in my way to be free.

Success is survival.

I looked for you in everyone And they called me on that too I lived alone but I was only Coming back to you.

When we are touched by a song, it is because the artist cannot hide himself.

I didn’t want to write for pay. I wanted to be paid for what I write.

There comes a point, I think, as you get a little older, you feel that nothing represents you. You can see the value of many positions, even positions that are in savage conflict with one another. You can locate components on both sides that resonate within you.

It doesn’t matter what you do because it’s going to happen anyway.

You have money, fame, youth, beauty, talent. That’s a good start… for feeling good.

I felt like if any two people had any kind of sexual affinity for each other they had to sleep with each other immediately, otherwise it was a terrible betrayal and waste…Fortunately, I’m relieved of those obsessions now. It’s really wonderful. It’s really wonderful not feeling you have to sleep with everybody.

You live your life as if it’s real… a thousand kisses deep.

Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore.

It’s hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender.

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded, Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed, Everybody knows that the war is over, Everybody knows the good guys lost.

When you walk on the stage and five thousand people have paid good money to hear you, there’s definitely a sense that you can blow it. The possibilities for disgrace are enormous.

Here’s to the few who forgive what you do, and the fewer who don’t even care.

Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you’re tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty .

When things get really bad, just raise your glass and stamp your feet and do a little jig. That’s about all you can do.

We are so lightly here. It is in love that we are made. In love, we disappear.

The record companies pressure me to force my songs because the stores want them to sell. I will not force my songs for them.

True love leaves no traces, if you and I are one, it’s lost in our embraces, like stars against the sun.

A kite is a victim you are sure of. you love it because it pulls.

To keep our hearts open is probably the most urgent responsibility you have as you get older.

Fare thee well my nightingale, I lived but to be near you. Thow you are singing somewhere still I can no longer hear you.

Love is the only engine of survival.

Do not be a magician – be magic!

As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder.

You lose your grip, and then you slip into the Masterpiece.

I have always been attracted to the voluptuousness of austerity. I never chose the style of my life because it hurt. It was on the contrary. I feel most comfortable and most abundant when things are very simple and I know where everything is and there’s nothing around that I don’t need.

I don’t remember lighting this cigarette and I don’t remember if I’m here alone or waiting for someone.

If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be seasick every day.

If I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often.

My reputation as a ladies’ man was a joke that caused me to laugh bitterly through the ten thousand nights I spent alone.

The older I get, the surer I am that I’m not running the show.

This is the most challenging activity that humans get into, which is love.

Pay attention to the cracks, because that’s where the light gets in.

Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in.

The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.

This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled. But there are moments when we can… reconcile and embrace the whole mess, and that’s what I mean by ‘Hallelujah.

Act the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you act.

You go to Heaven once you’ve been to Hell.

I like life on the road. It’s a lot easier than civilian life. You kind of feel like you’re in a motorcycle gang.

Music is the emotional life of most people.

I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair, with a love so vast and shattered it will reach you everywhere

I cannot follow you, my love, you cannot follow me. I am the distance you put between all of the moments that we will be.

I don’t consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin.

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.

The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape.

How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?

Women stand for the objective world for a man. They stand for the thing that you’re not and that’s what you always reach for in a song.

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.

We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky.

There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.

I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That’s what sitting on your ass does to your face.

Never make a decision when you need to pee.

And most people have a woman in their heart, most men have a woman in their heart and most women have a man in their heart.

It’s four in the morning, the end of december ,I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better.