Quotes from Poetry and Prose

If you love me for what you see, only your eyes would be in love with me. If you love me for what you've heard, then you would love me for my words. If you love my heart and mind, then you would love me, for all that I'm. But if you don't love my every flaw, then you mustn't love me -- not at all.

I slowly wake as day is dawning, to fingertips and lips imploring. The sheets against my skin, he says, like wrapping paper on Christmas morning.

It was the way you spoke about her. With animosity, regret, disdain and underneath it all -- just a hint of pride.

As a kid, I would count backwards from ten and imagine at one, there would be an explosion -- perhaps caused by a rogue planet crashing into Earth or some other major catastrophe. When nothing happened, I'd feel relieved and at the same time, a little disappointed. I think of you at ten; the first time I saw you. Your smile at nine and how it lit up something inside me I had thought long dead. Your lips at eight pressed against mine and at seven, your warm breath in my ear and your hands everywhere. You tell me you love me at six and at five we have our first real fight. At four we have our second and three, our third. At two you tell me you can't go on any longer and then at one, you ask me to stay. And I am relieved, so relieved -- and a little disappointed.

A sunken chest, on the ocean ground, to never be found was where he found me. There he stirred, my every thought, my every word, so gently, so profoundly. Now I am kept, from dreams I dreamt, when once I slept, so soundly.

In a sea of strangers, you've longed to know me. Your life spent sailing to my shores. The arms that yearn to someday hold me, will ache beneath the heavy oars. Please take your time and take it slowly; as all you do will run its course. And nothing else can take what only -- was always meant as solely yours.

I know not if this earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is but a speck of dust lost in eternity. I know not and I care not. For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth. And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.

But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else.

Love? said the Commander. What kind of love? Falling in love, I said. The Commander looked at me with his candid boy's eyes. Oh yes, he said. I've read the magazines, that's wht they were pushing, wasn't it? But look at the stats, my dear. Was it really worth it, falling in love? Arranged marriages have always worked out just as well, if not better.

We've given them more than we've taken away, said the Commander. Think of the trouble they had before. Don't you remember the singles' bars, the indignity of high school blind dates? The meat market. Don't you remember the terrible gap between the ones who could get a man easily and the ones who couldn't? Some of them were desperate, they starved themselves thin or pumped their breasts full of silicone, had their noses cut off. Think of the human misery.

You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, is what he says. We thought we could do better. Better? I say, in a small voice. How can he think this is better? Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some.

But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.

I wait, for the household to assemble. Household: that is what we are. The Commander is the head of the household. The house is what he holds. To have and to hold, till death do us part. The hold of a ship. Hollow.

If all rivers are sweet where does the sea get its salt?

What forced labor does Hitler do in hell? Does he paint walls or cadavers? Does he sniff the fumes of the dead? Do they feed him the ashes of so many burnt children? Or, since his death, have they given him blood to drink from a funnel? Or do they hammer into his mouth the pulled gold teeth?

Do we learn kindness or the mask of kindness?