“Cities at daybreak are no one’s, and have no names. And I, too, have no name, dawn, the stars growing pale, the train picking up speed.”

There exists a meaning, hidden from day to day, but accessible in moments of greatest attentiveness, in those moments when consciousness loves the world.

Clear moments are so short. There is much more darkness.

I don’t need to explain why it’s a curse.

And also read those whose darkness or malice or madness or greatness you can’t understand because only in this way will you grow, outlive yourself, and become what you are.

More ocean than terra firma. More shadow than form.

This day’s nothingness as if from spite became a flame and scorched the lips of children and poets.

What’s astonishing and refreshing is his ability to combine the reporter’s perspective with a deep knowledge of poetry, including pre-Islamic Arab poems.

Defend the value of the spiritual experience and if somebody tells you it’s an old fashioned notion, laugh loudly and serenely.

The odds and ends of your mental surplus you carelessly throw at the world, one wants to be at a loss, in a maze; amazed, and amazingly unabashed.

Gabriel Levin’s book is a journey through time and through entrenched animosities of the Middle East.

And tracing the labyrinthine ways of your mind, the haphazard vagaries of your thoughts at ease,

Read for yourselves, read for the sake of your inspiration, for the sweet turmoil in your lovely head.

But also read against yourselves, read for questioning and impotence, for despair and erudition…

I drink from a small spring, / my thirst excedes the ocean.

A brilliant poet is at work here-a poet in the rugged landscape of conflict and pain.

Be sober, be intelligent, be educated, rely on the tangible reality as long as you can.

And this has sometimes been a lonely road, because I never meet anybody coming the other way.

The words we read and words we write never say exactly what we mean. The people we love are never just as we desire them. The two symbols never perfectly match. Eros is in between.

It is … impossible to keep one’s excellence in a little glass casket, like a jewel, to take it out whenever wanted.

One may keep snug and dry by such knowledge, but one misses a world of loveliness.

Who will look out for you if you do the right thing.

Courage in danger is half the battle.

A wise man who stands firm is a statesman, a foolish man who stands firm is a catastrophe.

It is in the nature of cats to do a certain amount of unescorted roaming.