“I don’t know where too far is, but it isn’t here. Perhaps that means we are safe for the moment. Perhaps that means a storm is on the way. Perhaps that means my hands have never truly held you. Perhaps that means you’ve already slipped through my fingers.”

“Action is eloquence.”

     … And if beauty is terror, said Julian, then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?      To live, said Camilla.      To live forever, said Bunny, chin cupped in palm.

     The teakettle began to whistle.

• Nina cried power - “It’s not the wall but what’s behind it. Lord, the fear of foul men is mere assignment”
• Would that I - “With the war of the fire, my heart moves to its feet. Like the ashes of ash, I saw eyes in the heat. Feel it soft and as pure as snow. Fell in love with the fire long ago”

• Talk - “I won’t deny I’ve got in my mind now. All things I would do. So I try to talk refined for fear that you find out. How I’m imaginin’ you”

• Almost (sweet music) - “The same kind of music haunts her bedroom. I’m almost me again she’s almost you”
• Movement - “When you move I can recall somethin’ that’s gone from me. When you move honey I’m put in awe of somethin’ so flawed and free”

• Almost (sweet music) - “I wouldn’t know where to start sweet music playing in the dark, be still my foolish heart don’t ruin this on me”

• Wasteland, baby! - “And that day that we watch the death of the sun. That the cloud and the cold and those jeans you have on. And you gaze unafraid as they sob from the city ruins”

• Shrike - “Remember me love, when I’m reborn. As a shrike to your sharp and glorious thorn”
• Wasteland, baby! - “And the stench of the sea and the absence of green are the death of all things that are seen and unseen. Not an end, but the start of all things that are left to do. Wasteland baby I’m in love, I’m in love with you”

• Nobody - “I’d be appalled if I saw you ever try to be a saint. I wouldn’t fall for someone I thought couldn’t misbehave”

• To noise making (sing) - “You don’t have to sing it right. Who could call you wrong? You put your emptiness to melody, your awful heart to song”
• To noise making (sing) - “Who could ask to be unbroken or be brave again. Or honey, hope even on this side of the grave again?”

• Nobody - “And I think about you, lo, everywhere I go and I’ve done everything and I’ve been everywhere you know”
• Be - “Be like the love that discovered the sin. That freed the first man, would do so again. And, lover, be good to me”

• No plan - “The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun”
• Movement - “You are the rite of movement. It’s reasonin’ made lucid and cool. I know it’s no improvement”

• To noise making (sing) - “You don’t have to sing it nice, but honey sing it strong. At best you’ll find a little remedy. At worst the world will sing along”

• Talk - “I’d be the voice that urged Orpheus when her body was found. I’d be the choiceless hope in grief that drove him underground. I’d be the dreadful need in the devotee that made him turn around. And I’d be the immediate forgiveness in Eurydice. Imagine being loved by me”
• Sunlight- “Each day, you rise with me. Know that I would gladly be the Icarus to your certainty. Oh my sunlight, sunlight, sunlight. You strap the weight of me. A death trap clad happily. With wax melted, I need to see. Under sunlight, sunlight, sunlight”

“As a child I made a pact with my mother. I agreed that we were doomed, that she and I abided together in a cocoon of melancholy.”

“I liked the inwardness of poetry, and the sense that it elicited a personal opinion which, provided I paid attention to the signposts in the lines I was reading, couldn’t be ‘wrong’ in the way that I was invariably ‘wrong’ in mathematics and other subjects. I liked the dainty game of poetic forms. I liked the wildness of throwing over these forms. I liked the unashamed way that poetry addressed itself to and expressed strong feelings. I liked the music and the dance and the play and the certainty that it made sense – but not in the way that an article in the newspaper made sense. I liked it for fitting its music to the beauty or the barbarity of its subjects. And I liked it for being unpopular.”