“At the heart of all great art is an essential melancholy.”

“The night below. We two. Crystal of pain.You wept over great distances.My ache was a clutch of agoniesover your sickly heart of sand.”

“The artist, and particularly the poet, is always an anarchist in the best sense of the word. He must heed only the call that arises within him from three strong voices: the voice of death, with all its foreboding, the voice of love and the voice of art.”

“The night above. We two. Full moon.I started to weep, you laughed.Your scorn was a god, my lamentsmoments and doves in a chain.The night below. We two. Crystal of pain.You wept over great distances.My ache was a clutch of agoniesover your sickly heart of sand.Dawn married us on the bed,our mouths to the frozen spoutof unstaunched blood.The sun came through the shuttered balconyand the coral of life opened its branchesover my shrouded heart.- Night of Sleepless Love”

“A light which lives on what the flames devour,a grey landscape surrounding me with scorch,a crucifixion by a single wound,a sky and earth that darken by each hour,a sob of blood whose red ribbon adornsa lyre without a pulse, and oils the torch,a tide which stuns and strands me on the reef,a scorpion scrambling, stinging in my chest--this is the wreath of love, this bed of thornsis where I dream of you stealing my rest,haunting these sunken ribs cargoed with grief.I sought the peak of prudence, but I foundthe hemlock-brimming valley of your heart,and my own thirst for bitter truth and art.- Stigmata of Love”

“In the green morningI wanted to be a heart.A heart. And in the ripe eveningI wanted to be a nightingale.A nightingale. (Soul,turn orange-colored.Soul,turn the color of love.) In the vivid morningI wanted to be myself.A heart. And at the evening's endI wanted to be my voice.A nightingale. Soul,turn orange-colored.Soul,turn the color of love.- Ditty of First Desire”

“We're all curious about what might hurt us.”