“The unnatural and the strange have a perfume of their own”

“Passa uma borboleta por diante de mim E pela primeira vez no Universo eu reparo Que as borboletas não têm cor nem movimento, Assim como as flores não têm perfume nem cor. A cor é que tem cor nas asas da borboleta, No movimento da borboleta o movimento é que se move, O perfume é que tem perfume no perfume da flor. A borboleta é apenas borboleta E a flor é apenas flor.”

“We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It's our own concept—our own selves—that we love.”

“If this be to have sense, if to be awakeBe but to see this bright, great sleep of things,For the rarer potion mine own dreams I'll takeAnd for truth commune with imaginings”

“Nothing would bother me more than if they found me strange at the office. I like to revel in the irony that they don't find me at all strange. I like the hair shirt of being regarded by them as their equal. I like the crucifixion of being considered no different. THere are martyrdoms more subtle than those recorded for the saints and hermits. There are torments of our mental awareness as there are of the body and of desire. And in the former, as in the latter, there's a certain sensuality.....”

“This little boy playing next to me is an intellectual mass of cells - better yet, he's a clockwork of subatomic movements, a strange electrical conglomeration of millions of solar systems in minature. [58, Zenith trans.]”

“My hapless peers with their lofty dreams--how I envy and despise them! I'm with the others, the even more hapless, who have no-one but themselves to whom they can tell their dreams and show what would be verses if they wrote them. I'm with those poor slobs who have no books to show, who have no literature beside their own soul, and who are suffocating to death due to the fact that they exist without having taken that mysterious, transcendental exam that makes one eligible to live.”