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

Believe nothing of me except that I felt your beauty more closely than my own.

Love is the only engine of survival.

We’ve got to learn to love appearances.

I will never find the faces for all the goodbyes I’ve made.

Love is a fire/It burns everyone/It disfigures everyone/It is the world’s excuse for being ugly.

You go to Heaven once you’ve been to Hell.

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

Friend, when you speak this carefully I know it is because you don’t know what to say.

Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore.

I’m afraid to live any place but in expectation. I’m no life-risk.

It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. It is hard to show a pimple.

Remember when I moved in you And the holy dove was moving too, and every breath we drew was Hallelujah.

European children starved and watched their parents scheme and die. Here we grew up with toy whips. Early warning against our future leaders, the war babies.

Blessed are you who circled desire with a blade, and the garden with fiery swords, and heaven and earth with a word.

If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be seasick every day.

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as a secret to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.

Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.

I have found men who didn’t know how to kiss. I’ve always found time to teach them.

The first kiss I had was the most disgusting thing in my life. The girl injected about a pound of saliva into my mouth, and when I walked away I had to spit it all out.

If I had one wish I would ask for a big enough for the whole world to kiss.

Never delay kissing a pretty girl or opening a bottle of whiskey.

These violent delights have violent ends And in their triump die, like fire and powder Which, as they kiss, consume.

The real lover is the man who can thrill you by kissing your forehead or smiling into your eyes or just staring into space.

Love, what a long way, to arrive at a kiss.