All my life I've lived with a future which constantly diminishes but never vanishes.

Even sad stories are company. And perhaps that's why you might read such a chronicle, to look into a companionable darkness that isn't yours.

Into the paradise of euphony, the good poet must introduce hell. Broken paradises are the only kind worth reading.

What did you think, that joy / was some slight thing?

Desire can make anything into a god.

Here and gone. That’s what it is to be human, I think—to be both someone and no one at once, to hold a particular identity in the world (our names, our place of origins, our family and affectional ties) and to feel that solid set of ties also capable of dissolution, slipping away, as we become moments of attention.

Love, I think, is a gateway to the world, not an escape from it.