Quotes from Richard Siken

There should be just one safe place in the world, I mean this world. People get hurt here.

I wanted to be wanted and he was very beautiful

Imagine this: You're pulling the car over. Somebody's waiting. You're going to die in your best friend's arms.

so it's summer, so it's suicide, so we're helpless in sleep and struggling at the bottom of the pool.

Everyone in this room got here somehow and everyone in this room will have to leave. So what's left? Sing a song about the room we're in?

Let me do it right for once, for the record, let me make a thing of cream and stars that becomes, you know the story, simply heaven.

You were very beautiful.

I want to tell you this story without having to confess anything

sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud.

The fear: that nothing survives. The greater fear: that something does.

let's just get going, let's just get gone

you must want something, just tell me, and it's yours.

but you say the same thing every time. Let's not talk about it, let's just not talk.

It is too heavy, says the canvas. You lack restraint. I was sleeping in whiteness, drifts of snow, and you woke me and told me your dream, my blank face upturned, listening. You came to me while we were sleeping, we were both sleeping, and you asked me to hold this for you. I am holding this for you.

and I was trying to convince you that I was a vampire.

Don't bother. You never mean it anyway, not really

Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed. Crossed out.

There's only one thing I want, don't make me say it

And here is the tabernacle reconstructed.

The lawn drowned, the sky on fire, the gold light falling backwards through the glass of every room. I'll give you my heart to make a place for it to happen, evidence of a love that transcends hunger. Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars for you? That I would take you there?

We've made a graveyard out of the bone white afternoon.

I made this place for you. A place for you to love me. If this isn't the kingdom then I don't know what is.

and suddenly darkness, suddenly only darkness.

These are the dreams we should be having.