i exist. it’s sweet, so sweet, so slow. and light: you’d think it floated all by itself. ― jean-paul sartre

suppose the body did this to us, made us afraid of love. ― louise glück

the soul is silent. if it speaks at all it speaks in dreams. ― louise glück

from the beginning of time, in childhood, i thought that pain meant i was not loved. it meant i loved. ― louise glück

you get on a train, you disappear. you write your name on the window, you disappear. there are places like this everywhere, places you enter as a young girl, from which you never return. ― louise glück

you must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. that is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life. ― jiddu krishnamurti

i do not know / what happens to a body when it stops. / but tell me a story that did not begin with love. ― aracelis girmay

the hole in my heart is so big,room enough for the sky to pass through / holding jupiter’s hand. i can fill it with a mountain. i can fill it with a name. ― aracelis girmay

i love you. remember. they cannot take it. ― lauren oliver

it doesn’t matter what they will make of you or your days: they will be wrong, they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man, all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention. your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad, you slept, you awakened. ― jane hirshfield

you are quarter ghost on your mother’s side. your heart is a flayed peach in a bone box. ― jamaal may

i believe in a source. i believe we never come back. i believe two people standing in traintracks are bound to stop feeling the train that keeps running them over. ― stacie cassarino

you are shaking fists & trembling teeth. i know: you did not mean to be cruel. that does not mean you were kind. ― venetta octavia

when i was young, there were degrees of certainty. i could say, yes i know that i have two hands. then one day i awakened on a planet of people whose hands occasionally disappear. — anne carson

you are going to break your promise. i understand. and i hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that i will not hate you. — catherynne m. valente