Poetry isn’t an island, it is the bridge. Poetry isn’t a ship, it is the lifeboat. Poetry isn’t swimming. Poetry is water.

Reading poetry is like undressing before a bath. You don't undress out of fear that your clothes will become wet. You undress because you want the water to touch you. You want to completely immerse yourself in the feeling of the water and to emerge anew.

I write because the security of your love allows me to develop my craft without concerning myself with trivialities — as if your love could be any more complete. But I write, in the first place,because of you, my muse. I write for your green eyes to glance at my humble words and for the pleasure of hearing you utter them.

We are all born as storytellers. Our inner voice tells the first story we ever hear.

For what was it about books that once finished left the reader in a bit of a haze and made them reread the last few sentences in order to continue the ringing in their hearts a while longer, so as not to let the silence illumine the fact that reading, they had gained something — distance, a lesson, a companion, a new world — but now, after the last full stop, they had lost something palpable and felt a little emptier than before.

It is a dangerous thing to substitute reading or writing for living. Live first, then write.

Why didn't you write all this time?Did you not remember us in a song?A dance?In the skies littered with stars?Did you not get drunk?Why didn’t you write all this time?Did you not remember us in a film?A book?In idyllic dusks and dawns?Did you not get high?It is good that you didn't.For all is well. I am drunk and dazed.I have already forgotten youand your bewitching ways.

Oh, how scary and wonderful it is that words can change our lives simply by being next to each other.

Think not of the fragility of life, but of the power of books, when mere words have the ability to change our lives simply by being next to each other.