“I told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you.”

He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.

I’m old and the mirrors don’t lie.

I don’t even hate books anymore.

The older I get, the surer I am that I’m not running the show.

When passion dies friendship hovers round our flesh like flies.

There is a crack in everything.

The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.

Poetry is a verdict, not an occupation.

We are so lightly here. It is in love that we are made. In love we disappear.

You wanted to be the Superman who was never Clark Kent.

Ordinary eternal machinery, like the grinding of the stars.

A young nurse is standing close behind me wondering whether she is being drawn by my power or her charity.

After a while, if you are sufficiently bored or unemployed, you may want to read it from cover to cover.

A kite is a victim you are sure of. You love it because it pulls.

You live your life as if it’s real, a thousand kisses deep.

To kiss her there was to intrude into something private and skeletal, like a turtle’s shoulder.