• M. Aan Mansyur

"Akan kuhentikan tahun-tahun diamku demi mengatakan kau cantik. Setelah itu, aku bunuh diri. Atau memintamu jadi seekor gagak yang mematuk mataku. Aku ingin melihat perih terakhir adalah merah paruhmu."

"Kau hanya mampu menghilang jika pergi melampaui dunia sebelum aku mengenalmu."

"Ada Remaja abadi yang tidak kaukenal dalam diriku. Selalu, di museum yang sama, ia seperti patung belum dirampungkan pahat. Ia tak mampu membedakan antara menghadapi lukisan dan berdiri di puncak tebing. Ia menjatuhkan diri ke semesta benda-benda di bingkai ketika belum jadi bangkai atau hantu."

• Sapardi Djoko Damono

“Bagaimana mungkin seseorang memiliki keinginan untuk mengurai kembali benang yang tak terkirakan jumlahnya dalam selembar saputangan yang telah ditenunnya sendiri. Bagaimana mungkin seseorang bisa mendadak terbebaskan dari jaringan benang yang susun-bersusun, silang-menyilang, timpa-menimpa dengan rapi di selembar saputangan yang sudah bertahun-tahun lamanya ditenun dengan sabar oleh jari-jarinya sendiri oleh kesunyiannya sendiri oleh ketabahannya sendiri oleh tarikan dan hembusan napasnya sendiri oleh rintik waktu dalam benaknya sendiri oleh kerinduannya sendiri oleh penghayatannya sendiri tentang hubungan-hubungan pelik antara perempuan dan laki-laki yang tinggal di sebuah ruangan kedap suara yang bernama kasih sayang. Bagaimana mungkin."

• Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”

• Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)

“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”

“We were like gods at the dawning of the world, & our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.”

“I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me. If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth. As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong. “Patroclus,” he said. He was always better with words than I.”

• Marina Tsvetaeva (How nicе to know what ails me is not you...)
• Farouq Jwaydeh

“and if the devil was to ever see you, he’d kiss your eyes and repent”