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Quotes by Chilean Authors
"The days aren't discarded or collected, they are beesthat burned with sweetness or maddenedthe sting: the struggle continues,the journeys go and come between honey and pain.No, the net of years doesn't unweave: there is no net.They don't fall drop by drop from a river: there is no river.Sleep doesn't divide life into halves,or action, or silence, or honor:life is like a stone, a single motion,a lonesome bonfire reflected on the leaves,an arrow, only one, slow or swift, a metalthat climbs or descends burning in your bones."
"You have to be able to risk your identity for a bigger future than the present you are living."
"Then love knew it was called love. And when I lifted my eyes to your name, suddenly your heart showed me my way."
"I know you exist not just because your eyes flyand give light to things like an open window."
"Love is a clash of lightnings."
"Of so much moon were your hips to me,of all the sun your deep mouth and its delight,of so much burning light like honey in the shade."
"It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour which the night fastens to all timetables."
"Come see the cherry trees of a water constellationand the round key of the rapid universe,come touch the fire of instantaneous blue,come before its petals are consumed."
"No, my dog used to gaze at me,paying me the attention I need,the attention requiredto make a vain person like me understandthat, being a dog, he was wasting time,but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,he'd keep on gazing at mewith a look that reserved for me aloneall his sweet and shaggy life,always near me, never troubling me,and asking nothing."
"She did not believe that the world was a vale of tears but rather a joke that God had played and that it was idiotic to take it seriously if He himself never had."
"Girl lithe and tawny, the sun that formsthe fruits, that plumps the grains, that curls seaweedsfilled your body with joy, and your luminous eyesand your mouth that has the smile of the water.A black yearning sun is braided into the strandsof your black mane, when you stretch your arms.You play with the sun as with a little brookand it leaves two dark pools in your eyes."
"You came to my lifewith what you were bringing,madeof light and bread and shadow I expected you,and Like this I need you,Like this I love you,and to those who want to hear tomorrowthat which I will not tell them, let them read it here,and let them back off today because it is earlyfor these arguments."
"I cannot quit your love without dying."
"I have named you queen.There are taller than you, taller.There are purer than you, purer.There are lovelier than you, lovelier.But you are the queen.When you go through the streetsNo one recognizes you.No one sees your crystal crown, no one looksAt the carpet of red goldThat you tread as you pass,The nonexistent carpet.And when you appearAll the rivers soundIn my body, bellsShake the sky,And a hymn fills the world.Only you and I,Only you and I, my love,Listen to it."
"And tell me everything, tell chain by chain, and link by link, and step by step; sharpen the knives you kept hidden away, thrust them into my breast, into my hands, like a torrent of sunbursts, an Amazon of buried jaguars, and leave me cry: hours, days and years, blind ages, stellar centuries."
"Here I came to the very edge where nothing at all needs saying, everything is absorbed through weather and the sea, and the moon swam back, its rays all silvered, and time and again the darkness would be broken by the crash of a wave, and every day on the balcony of the sea, wings open, fire is born, and everything is blue again like morning."
"Beyond the earth and the shadowthe brightness of our love will stay alive."
"And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don't know how or when, no they were not voices, they were not words, nor silence, but from a street I was summoned, from the branches of night, abruptly from the others, among violent fires or returning alone, there I was without a face and it touched me."
"I love you without knowing how, nor when, nor from where,I love you directly without problems or pride:I love you this way because I know no other way to love."
"I want to see thirstIn the syllables,Tough fireIn the sound;Feel through the darkFor the scream."
"You, my friend, could be the smoke's daughter, you who may not have known you were born of fire and rage,lightning over flaming lava etched your violet mouth,your sex in the scorched oak's moss like a ring in a nest,your fingers there in the flames, your compact bodyrose from leaves of fire that make me recallthere were bakers in your family tree,you're still the rainforest's bread, ash from violent wheat."
"In times of conflict, war, poverty or religious fundamentalism, women and children are the first and most numerous victims. Women need all their courage today."
"Y por que el sol es tan mal amigodel caminante en el desierto?Y por que el sol es tan simpaticoen el jardin del hospital?And why is the sun such a bad companionto the traveler in the desert?And why is the sun so congenial in the hospital garden?"
"You are like nobody since I love you."
"Donde termina el arco iris,en tu alma o en el horizonte?Where does the rainbow end,in your soul or on the horizon?"
"But why give a man something it's so hard to earn? In that respect women are really thick. They're the daughters of rigidity. They need a man to feel secure but they don't realize that the one thing they should be afraid of is men. They don't know how to run their lives. They have to sacrifice themselves for the sake of someone else. Whores are the worst, patron, believe me. They throw their lives away working for some pimp, smile when he beats them, feel proud when he's well dressed, with his gold teeth and rings on his fingers, and when he goes off and takes up with a woman half their age they forgive him everything because 'he's a man."
"Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood."
"I shivered in thosesolitudeswhen I heardthe voiceofthe saltin the desert."
"I have hunger for your mouth, for your voice, for your hair."
"Settle your perfect hips here and the bow of wet arrowsloosens into the night the petals that form your formlet your clay limbs climb the silence and its pale ladderrung by rung taking off with me in my dream.I can sense you scaling the shade tree that sings to the shadows.Dark is the world's night without you my love."
"I stalk certain words... I catch them in mid-flight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set myself in front of the dish, they have a crystalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives... I stir them, I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them... I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, like pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves... Everything exists in the word."
"Oh invade me with your scalding mouth,search me if you like, with your nocturnal eyes,but allow me to sail and sleep upon your name."
"While I'm writing, I'm far away;and when I come back, I've gone."
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