As quoted in "Mevlana Jalal al-Din Rumi" http://en.mfethullahgulen.com/content/view/1820/49/ by Fethullah Gülen in The Fountain #24 (July-September 2004)
Variant translation: I want a heart which is split, chamber by chamber, by the pain of separation from God, so that I might explain my longings and desires to it.
1977 interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEWsxCrMM1U in Pitkin County Prison, Colorado
CNN obituary (17 October 1997) http://www.cnn.com/US/9710/16/michener.obit/
Source: "Padma Lakshmi Understands That American Foodways Are Complicated" in Harper's Bazaar https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/travel-dining/a38254952/padma-lakshmi-taste-the-nation-interview/ (16 November 2021)
“When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.”
In a letter to the editor of the Atlantic Monthly.
Context: By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss-waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will remain split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed and attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have.
