“The feelings trembled and flapped in his chest like a bird newly put in a cage.”

“To Love is to be God.Never will a Lover's chest feel any sorrow.Never will a Lover's robe be touched by mortals.Never will a Lover's body be found buried in the earth.To Love is to be God.”

“I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.”

“When the rose is gone and the garden fadedyou will no longer hear the nightingale's song.The Beloved is all; the lover just a veil. The Beloved is living; the lover a dead thing.If love withholds its strengthening care,the lover is left like a bird without care,the lover is left like a bird without wings.How will I be awake and awareif the light of the Beloved is absent?Love wills that this Word be brought forth.”

“Each has to enter the nest made by the other imperfect bird.”

“The Ripe FigNow that You live here in my chest,anywhere we sit is a mountaintop.And those other images,which have enchanted peoplelike porcelain dolls from China,which have made men and women weepfor centuries, even those have changed now.What used to be pain is a lovely benchwhere we can rest under the roses.A left hand has become a right.A dark wall, a window.A cushion in a shoe heel,the leader of the community!Now silence. What we sayis poison to someand nourishing to others.What we say is a ripe fig,but not every bird that flieseats figs.”

“You dance inside my chest,where no one sees you,but sometimes I do, and thatsight becomes this art.”