Quotes from Pablo Neruda

Entre los labios y la voz, algo se va muriendo. Algo con alas de pájaro, algo de angustia y de olvido

Take it all back. Life is boring, except for flowers, sunshine, your perfect legs. A glass of cold water when you are really thirsty. The way bodies fit together. Fresh and young and sweet. Coffee in the morning. These are just moments. I struggle with the in-betweens. I just want to never stop loving like there is nothing else to do, because what else is there to do?

If you should ask me where I've been all this time I have to say Things happen. I have to dwell on stones darkening the earth, on the river ruined in its own duration: I know nothing save things the birds have lost, the sea I left behind, or my sister crying. Why this abundance of places? Why does day lock with day? Why the dark night swilling round in our mouths? And why the dead?

Your eyes have the colour of the moon

From sorrow to sorrow love crosses its islands and establishes roots that are watered by weeping.

I love you as one loves certain dark things.

Podrán cortar todas las flores, pero no podrán detener la primavera.

Everything is so alive, that I can be alive. Without moving I can see it all. In your life I see everything that lives.

I touched you and my life stopped

Sometimes a piece of sun burned like a coin in my hand.

On our earth, before writing was invented, before the printing press was invented, poetry flourished. That is why we know that poetry is like bread; it should be shared by all, by scholars and by peasants, by all our vast, incredible, extraordinary family of humanity.

The birds of night peck at the first stars that flash like my soul when I love you.

A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don't slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices.

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.

And what importance do I have in the courtroom of oblivion?

I remembered you with my soul clenched

Each hour, Each day

I built up these lumber piles of love, and with fourteen boards each I built little houses, so that your eyes, which I adore and sing to, might live in them. Now that I have declared the foundations of my love, I surrender this century to you: wooden sonnets that rise only because you gave them life.

Joyful, joyful, joyful, as only dogs know how to be happy with only the autonomy of their shameless spirit.

Where were you then? Who else was there? Saying what? Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly when I am sad and feel you are far away?

It is not so much light that falls over the world extended by your body its suffocating snow, as brightness, pouring itself out of you, as if you were burning inside. Under your skin the moon is alive.

In you is the illusion of each day. You arrive like the dew to the cupped flowers. You undermine the horizon with your absence. Eternally in flight like the wave.

Hoy es hoy, y ayer se fue. No hay duda.

Take bread away from me, if you wish, take air away, but do not take from me your laughter.