“Let my heiress have full rights,Live in my house, sing songs that I composed.Yet how slowly my strength ebbs,How the tortured breast craves air.The love of my friends, my enemies' rancorAnd the yellow roses in my bushy garden,And a lover's burning tenderness—all thisI bestow upon you, messenger of dawn.Also the glory for which I was born,For which my star, like some whirlwind, soaredAnd now falls. Look, its fallingProphesies your power, love and inspiration.Preserving my generous bequest,You will live long and worthily.Thus it will be. You see, I am content,Be happy, but remember me.”

“You think I am afraid to love you, ma fee? Look at me, my only love, and see how you hold my heart in your hands, see how much I love you when you look into my eyes.”

“A lover asked his beloved,Do you love yourself more than you love me?Beloved replied, I have died to myself and I live for you.I've disappeared from myself and my attributes,I am present only for you.I've forgotten all my learnings,but from knowing you I've become a scholar.I've lost all my strength, but from your power I am able.I love myself...I love you.I love you...I love myself.”

“I used to think I was content, but now I could see that my contentment was based upon how well I controlled the circumstances of my life, not upon my trust in a loving God.”

“If you no longer live,if you my beloved, my love, if you have died,all the leaves will fall in my breast,it will rain in my soul night and day,the snow will burn my heart,I shall walk with frost and fire and deathand snow,my feet will want to walk to where youare sleeping, butI shall live”

“In a moment, when I throw myself down among the absinthe plants to bring their scent into my body, I shall know, appearances to the contrary, that I am fulfilling a truth which is the sun's and which will also be my death's. In a sense, it is indeed my life that I am staking here, a life that tastes of warm stone, that is full of the signs of the sea and the rising song of the crickets. The breeze is cool and the sky blue. I love this life with abandon and wish to speak of it boldly: it makes me proud of my human condition. Yet people have often told me: there's nothing to be proud of. Yes, there is: this sun, this sea, my heart leaping with youth, the salt taste of my body and this vast landscape in which tenderness and glory merge in blue and yellow. It is to conquer this that I need my strength and my resources. Everything here leaves me intact, I surrender nothing of myself, and don no mask: learning patiently and arduously how to live is enough for me, well worth all their arts of living.”