“By means of poetry all this suffering and effort could be transformed into dream; no matter how much of the ephemeral existed, poetry could immortalize it by turning it into song. Only two or three primitive passions had governed me until this time: fear, the struggle to conquer fear, and the yearning for freedom. But now two new passions were kindled inside me: beauty and the thirst for learning.”

“Neither of us wanted to say it first. But our two souls had become one in a realm no one else could venture into. The immortal coil of passion had wrapped around us forever. It had begun with lust and attraction and blossomed into so much more. Fear of rejection kept us from declaring it.”

“With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.”

“But he cannot see a connection between the end of yearning and the end of poetry. Is that what growing up amounts to: growing out of yearning, of passion, of all intensities of the soul?”

“There are some who live by every rule and cling tightly to their rectitude because they fear being swept away by a tempest of passion, and there are others who cling to the rules because they fear that there is no passion there at all, and that if they let go they would simply remain where they are, foolish and unmoved; and they could bear that least of all. Living a life of iron control lets them pretend to themselves that only by the mightiest effort of will can they hold great passions at bay.”

“Somewhere, deep within me, beyond the passion, beyond the beauty of the night, that little spark of Daily magic ignited in me again, began burning in a place that had gone dark and untended, that had yearned to be bright and warm. I felt it now, something old, something new, something complete. Perhaps it had been in there in me all along, the belief that there is a plan and a purpose, that God whispers into every life, some things that are beyond the scope of the mind, and can only be felt with the heart and the spirit. Those dreams, the dreams that are dreamed *for* us, not by us, are the truest of all.”