Walking in the dark streets of Seoul under the almost full moon. Lost for the last two hours. Finishing a loaf of bread and worried about the curfew. I have not spoken for three days and I am thinking, “Why not just settle for love? Why not just settle for love instead?

What can I do with these people? They come to the risk so dutifully. Are delighted by anecdotes that give them Poetry. Are grateful to be told of diagonals that give them Painting. Good people. But stubborn when warned the beast is not domestic. How can I persuade them that the dark, soulful Keats was five feet one? Liked fighting and bear-baiting? I can’t explain the red hair. Nor say how you died so full of lust for Fanny Brawne. I will tell them of Semele.

The heart is a foreign country whose language none of us is good at.

Why do so manysettle for so little? I don’t understand why they’re not greedy for what’s inside them.

Fame is a lot of fun, but it’s not interesting. I loved being noticed and praised, even the banquets. But they didn’t have anything that I wanted. After about six months, I found it boring.

Let me fall in love one last time, I beg them. Teach me mortality, frighten me into the present.

Without bravery, we will never be able to realize the vaulting scope of our own capacities. Without bravery, we will never know the world as richly as it longs to be known. Without bravery, our lives will remain small – far smaller than we probably want our lives to be.

You can’t work in a steel mill and think small.

But one can acquire a taste for love as for loneliness or ugliness as for saintliness. Each a special way of going down.

I’m vain enough to think that I’ve made a successful life. I’ve had everything I’ve ever wanted. You can’t beat that.