“When you’re not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you’ve sinned.”

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.

How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?

Your faith was strong, but you needed proof.

Deprivation is the mother of poetry.

Going nowhere isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply.

There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn’t.

When I hear modern people complain of being lonely then I know what has happened. They have lost the cosmos.

Success is my breathing space. I brought it on myself. I will price it, I will cash it, I can take it or leave it. Loneliness is my hiding place, breastfeeding myself. What more can I say? I have swallowed the bitter pill, I can taste it. Life is real.

You’re only lonely if you’re not there for you

My lonely soul drowns in empty bodies.

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

You can have everything in the world and still be the loneliest man. And that is the most bitter type of loneliness, success has brought me world idolization and millions of pounds. But it’s prevented me from having the one thing we all need: A loving, ongoing relationship.

Can you imagine how terrible it is when you’ve got everything and you’re still desperately lonely? That is awful beyond words.

The mindset for walking lonely political paths may not be self-evident to those who seek confirmation by hundreds, sometimes thousands of friends on Facebook.