“SonnetI am no stranger in the house of pain;I am familiar with its every part,From the low stile, then up the crooked laneTo the dark doorway, intimate to my heart.Here did I sit with grief and eat his bread,Here was I welcomed as misfortune’s guest,And there’s no room but where I’ve laid my headOn misery’s accomodating breast.So, sorrow, does my knocking rouse you up?Open the door, old mother; it is I.Bring grief’s good goblet out, the sad, sweet cup;Fill it with wine of silence, strong and dry.For I’ve a story to amuse your ears,Of youth and hope, of middle age and tears.”

“I often wish I’d got on better with your father,’ he said.But he never liked anyone who–our friends,’ said Clarissa; and could have bitten her tongue for thus reminding Peter that he had wanted to marry her.Of course I did, thought Peter; it almost broke my heart too, he thought; and was overcome with his own grief, which rose like a moon looked at from a terrace, ghastly beautiful with light from the sunken day. I was more unhappy than I’ve ever been since, he thought. And as if in truth he were sitting there on the terrace he edged a little towards Clarissa; put his hand out; raised it; let it fall. There above them it hung, that moon. She too seemed to be sitting with him on the terrace, in the moonlight.”

“So I died many times that year.In the cold, in the storm, on the run or on the drunk for my heart did not want to beatbut kept on beating anywayand my pain was as real as real can be,and I tried to learn and deal and run and feelbut nothing really worked.I built a comfortable home in my sorrow and settled into a quiet living. No sparks or grand gestures, just a simple daily hymn to comfort. The leaves fell off the trees and coloured this city in all kinds of pretty, and some days that was enough to make me smile at least a little bit, within.”

“I keep falling deep down into my dark abyss… At some point my abyss will turn into a horizon…”

“Gradually, we have become each other’s weather.”

“Tonight I Can WriteTonight I can write the saddest lines.Write, for example, ‘The night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.Tonight I can write the saddest lines.I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.How could one not have loved her great still eyes.Tonight I can write the saddest lines.To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.What does it matter that my love could not keep her.The night is starry and she is not with me.This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.The same night whitening the same trees.We, of that time, are no longer the same.I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.Another’s. She will be another’s. As she was before my kisses.Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.Love is so short, forgetting is so long.Because through nights like this one I held her in my armsmy soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.Though this be the last pain that she makes me sufferand these the last verses that I write for her.”

“Are you by yourself, darling? I can’t bear the thought of you dying alone.No, mum, I’m with my friend. I’m with Courtney…Courtney…He called out her name. ‘Courtney,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry…’But Courtney was already dead.”

“who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded and loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,”

“Love can cause problem and love can heal humanly problems based on our virtue.”

“For how imperiously, how coolly, in disregard of all one’s feelings, does the hard, cold, uninteresting course of daily realities move on! Still we must eat, and drink, and sleep, and wake again, – still bargain, buy, sell, ask and answer questions, – pursue, in short, a thousand shadows, though all interest in them be over; the cold, mechanical habit of living remaining, after all vital interest in it has fled.”

“Not easy to state the change you made.If I’m alive now, I was dead,Though, like a stone, unbothered by it.”

“When I reach the end of one row, I continue straight on away from the barn and the farm and the road. I walk until I come to a pile of hay bales and plop myself down. The sun is bright and the air is sharp. In the distance I hear the lowing of cows. It’s so peaceful here.”Merry Christmas, ” I whisper to myself. “Merry Christmas, Nate.”

“May you suffer enough tragedy to gain a vast knowledge and understanding of life.”

“The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don’t know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they’ve been listening to the sad songs longer than they’ve been living the unhappy lives.”

“His absence is so big it’s like he’s there.”