Pablo Neruda

"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?"

"I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,vacillating, stretched out, shivering with sleep,downward, in the soaked guts of the earth,absorbing and thinking, eating each day."

"I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests."

"You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming."

"As if you were on fire from within.The moon lives in the lining of your skin."

"I hunger for your sleek laugh and your hands the color of a furious harvest. I want to eat the sunbeams flaring in your beauty."

"Escóndeme en tus brazospor esta noche sola,mientras la lluvia rompecontra el mar y la tierrasu boca innumerable."

"Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air."

"I want to see thirstIn the syllables,Tough fireIn the sound;Feel through the darkFor the scream."

"I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too."

"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."

"You are like nobody since I love you."

"Quiero hacer contigo lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos"

"Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life."

"But I love your feet only because they walked upon the earth and upon the wind and upon the waters, until they found me."

"I love all things, not only the grand but the infinitely small: thimble, spurs, plates, flower vases....."

"I want to see thirstIn the syllables,Tough fireIn the sound;Feel through the darkFor the scream."

"Our love was bornoutside the walls,in the wind,in the night,in the earth,and that's why the clay and the flower,the mud and the rootsknow your name."

"The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty."

"Poetry is an act of peace. Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread."