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“I am a reflection of my mother’s secret poetry as well as of her hidden angers”

“We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.”

I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.

The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.

Everyone interprets everything in terms of his own experience. If you say anything which does not touch a precisely similar spot in another man’s brain, he either misunderstands you, or doesn’t understand you at all.

I hadn’t quite enough sense to know that what I really wanted was human companions. There aren’t such things. Every man is eternally alone. But when you get mixed up with a fairly decent crowd, you forget that appalling fact for long enough to give your brain time to recover from the acute symptoms of its disease -that of thinking.

There is much more strength in a man who reveals himself only when it is necessary. I have suffered from being alone, but because I have been able to keep my secret I have overcome the suffering of loneliness… And, today, there is no greater joy than to live alone and unknown. My deepest joy is to write. To accept the world and to accept pleasure — but only when I am stripped bare of everything. I should not be worthy to love the bare and empty beaches if I could not remain naked in the presence of myself. For the first time I can understand the meaning of the word happiness without any ambiguity. It is a little different from what men normally mean when they say: ‘I am happy.’ A certain persistence in despair finally gives birth to joy… And if I now feel that I have come to a turning point in my life, this is not because of what I have won but because of what I have lost. Within me, I feel a deep and intense strength that will enable me to live as I intend. If, today, I feel so distant from everything, it is because I have strength only to love and to admire. Life with its face of tears and sun, life in the salt sea and on warm stones, life as I love and understand it — as I caress it I feel my love and despair gathering strength within me. Today is not like a resting place between ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ It is both ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ ‘No,’ and rebellion against everything which is not tears and sunlight. ‘Yes’ to my life, whose future promise I now feel within myself for the first time.

i wish i knew how to move slower. how to kiss hard and still come up for air. how to be kind to each moment like it is my very best lover, an engine of pumpkin sweat and skin. i hope i learn to love myself when no one is looking. i need to drink more water. maybe that is all i ever need to do. drink more water. kiss you. walk to the store. i am the slowest revolutionary.

“People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.”

“Don’t say anything, because I see that you understand me, and I am afraid of your understanding. I have such a fear of finding another like myself, and such a desire to find one! I am so utterly lonely, but I also have such a fear that my isolation be broken through, and I no longer be the head and ruler of my universe. I am in great terror of your understanding by which you penetrate into my world; and then I stand revealed and I have to share my kingdom with you.”