“We were green: we ripened and grew golden.The Sea terrified us: we learned how to drown.Squat and earthbound, we unfolded huge wings.We started sober: are love's startled drunkards.You hide me in your cloak of nothingnessReflect my ghost in your glass of beingI am nothing, yet appear: transparent dreamWhere your eternity briefly trembles.”

“I was hiding my heart and you were hiding yours too and we played hide and seek together and both of us lost.”

“What is an adventure? That depends on where you are starting from. Little girls in your country, they hide in the gap between the washing machine and the refrigerator and they make believe they are in the jungle, with green snakes and monkeys all around them. Me and my sister, we used to hide in a gap in the jungle, with green snakes and monkeys all around us, and make believe that we had a washing machine and a refrigerator. You live in a world of machines and you dream off things with beating hearts. We dream of machines, because we see where beating hearts have left us.”

“I am not jealousof what came before me.Come with a manon your shoulders,come with a hundred men in your hair,come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,come like a riverfull of drowned menwhich flows down to the wild sea,to the eternal surf, to Time!Bring them allto where I am waiting for you;we shall always be alone,we shall always be you and Ialone on earth,to start our life!”

“When the heavens are obscured to us, and nothing noble or heroic appears, but we are oppressed by imperfection and shortcoming on all hands, we are apt to suck our thumbs and decry our fates. As if nothing were to be done in cloudy weather, or, if heaven were not accessible by the upper road, men would not find out a lower... There are two ways to victory, - to strive bravely, or to yield. How much pain the last will save we have not yet learned.”

“Daughter, we didn't need your note - or a prince's visit - to tell us you'd done nothing wrong. We know the daughter we raised. We fear for your future, but never for your character. You take our love and our trust wherever you wander. Father.”