“Then she decided she was ready to die.But before she did, she asked the poets to record these momentsin song, and the architects to carve the song in marble,and the marble to be extracted from the most secret veinsof the earth and placed where no man could see it,because that is the nature of love, because one walks alonethrough the ruins of the heart, because the young must sleepwith their eyes open, because the angels tremblefrom so much beauty, because memory moves in orbitsof absence, because she holds her hands out in the rain,and rain remembers nothing, not even how it became itself.”

“Because you brand our tongueswith silence. Because you watch usin fear, even while we sing.”

“See, the thing is I didn't think that that song would get much attention because it's such a personal song to me. I just wrote it about my childhood, and I didn't know how that would read on an album. But it's been everybody's favorite song. I didn't tell my mom. It was a total secret. So I wrote it in secret and then decided to record it secretly, so she had no idea that the song was recorded. My producers sent me the track and I synched it up to all my baby videos and I played it for her one Christmas Eve, and she bawled her eyes out. She didn't even think that it was my song. She didn't think there was any way for me to record a song without her knowing.”

“I don’t want to ever see her again, because I want to always remember her as she was—young and beautiful. She won't remember, because she was 88 when we met and suffering from dementia.”

“Let me be the first to say that I know the name for everything and if I don’t I’ll make them up: dukkha, naufragio, talinhaga. Just like the young whose hearts give no shame, I love the excesses of beauty, there is never enough sunlight in the world I will live in, never enough room for love.I fear none of us will last long enough to prove what I’ve always suspected, that the sky is a membrane in an angel’s skull, trees talk to each other at night, ice is water in a state of silence, the embryo listens to everything we say.I am afraid for the child skipping rope on the corner of my street, the girl on the train with flowers in her hair, the man whose memory is entirely in Spanish. I am more afraid of losing consciousness when I go to sleep, or that in my sleep I will grow old and forget how desire once drove me mad with wakefulness.Just like the perfect seasons they will die and I will die and you will die also; no one knows who will go first, and this is the source of all my grief.”

“The monsoon came, six monthsof infinite rain. The towns I once knewwere wiped clean,and everyone said it was Godrevising his poem.”

“You don't love a girl because of beauty. You love her because she sings a song only you can understand.”