Quote collection
289 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"My duty moves along with my song: I am I am not: that is my destiny. I exist not if I do not attend to the pain of those who suffer: they are my pains. For I cannot be without existing for all, for all who are silent and oppressed, I come from the people and I sing for them: my poetry is song and punnishment."
"I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrence risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body. and: No one can stop the river of your hands, your eyes and their sleepiness, my dearest. You are the trembling of time, which passes between the vertical light and the darkening sky. and: From the stormy archipelagoes I brought my windy accordian, waves of crazy rain, the habitual slowness of natural things: they made up my wild heart."
"sometimes i get up at dawn, and even my soul is wet."
"I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests."
"If you no longer live, if you my beloved, my love, if you have died, all the leaves will fall in my breast, it will rain in my soul night and day, the snow will burn my heart, I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow, my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping, but I shall live"
"Well, now If little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you Little by little If suddenly you forget me Do not look for me For I shall already have forgotten you If you think it long and mad the wind of banners that passes through my life And you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots Remember That on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms And my roots will set off to seek another land"
"In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?"
"Sufre mas el que espera siempre que aquel que nunca espero a nadie? Does he who is always waiting suffer more than he who’s never waited for anyone?"
"I want to do for you what the spring does for the cherry trees"
"Hate is like a swordfish, working through water invisibly and then you see it coming with blood along its blade, but transparency disarms it."
"Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air."
"I should like to sleep like a cat, with all the fur of time, with a tongue rough as flint, with the dry sex of fire; and after speaking to no one, stretch myself over the world, over roofs and landscapes, with a passionate desire to hunt the rats in my dreams."
"If you should ask me where I've been all this time I have to say "Things happen." I have to dwell on stones darkening the earth, on the river ruined in its own duration: I know nothing save things the birds have lost, the sea I left behind, or my sister crying. Why this abundance of places? Why does day lock with day? Why the dark night swilling round in our mouths? And why the dead?"
"Give me, for my life, all lives, give me all the pain of everyone, I'm going to turn it into hope. Give me all the joys, even the most secret, because otherwise how will these things be known? I have to tell them, give me the labors of everyday, for that's what I sing."
"The night is shattered, and the blue stars shiver in the distance."
"I hunger for your sleek laugh and your hands the color of a furious harvest. I want to eat the sunbeams flaring in your beauty."
"Only do not forget, if I wake up crying it's only because in my dream I'm a lost child hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands."
"When I sleep every night, what am I called or not called? And when I wake, who am I if I was not I while I slept?"
"Tell me, is the rose naked or is that her only dress? Why do trees conceal the splendor of their roots? Who hears the regrets of the thieving automobile? Is there anything in the world sadder than a train standing in the rain?"
"I was the owner of my own darkness."