“Wear your heart on your skin in this life.”

The truth comes to me. The truth loves me.

She stared at her reflection in the glossed shop windows as if to make sure, moment by moment, that she continued to exist.

It’s a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It’s much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.

If the body is a temple, then tattoos are its stained glass windows.

The constant struggle in mature life, I think, is to accept the necessity of tragedy and conflict, and not to try to escape to some falsely simple solution which does not include these more somber complexities.

I am too pure for you or anyone.

One thing, I try to be honest. And what is revealed is often rather hideously unflattering.

I feel terribly vulnerable and ‘not-myself’ when I’m not writing.

The sheets grow heavy as a lecher’s kiss.

My mother said the cure for thinking too much about yourself was helping somebody who was worse off than you.

I am not cruel, only truthful.

I write only because There is a voice within me That will not be still.

I talk to God but the sky is empty.

Sometimes I feel like I’m not solid. I’m hollow. There’s nothing behind my eyes. I’m a negative of a person. All I want is blackness, blackness and silence.

Compared with me, a tree is immortal.

I dream too much, work too little.

The autumn breeze carves out an ache in your memory.

Sworn enemies. Past lovers. What did either of our hearts do to deserve this. You were poetry to me.

Amnesty International adopted me as a prisoner of conscience, and that led to my – it touched me in a way that really led to me opening up my heart, I’ve called it the re-humanisation process.

God, I know you’ve been there. I know you’ve been there even if I didn’t feel you. I ask you open my heart up to you when I want to close it.

A long time ago I came to realize that no matter where I am no distance I could go can ever make my heart forget you’ve made a home inside my soul.

How disheartening and yet a kind of relief that you too turned out to be just like all the rest. How freeing it is to watch the sun rise and set without you.

I still hold hollow hopes for the day, my heart keeps it beat whenever I hear your name.

Love cannot be had for the asking; it comes only as a gift from the heart of another.