Quotes from book

Sexing the Cherry

“I fell in love once, if love be that cruelty which takes us straight to the gates of Paradise only to remind us they are closed for ever.”

“Every journey conceals another journey within its lines: the path not taken and the forgotten angle.”

“Islands are metaphors of the heart, no matter what poet says otherwise.”

“It is a true saying, that what you fear you find.”

“Are we all living like this? Two lives, the ideal outer life and the inner imaginative life where we keep our secrets?”

“Language always betrays us, tells the truth when we want to lie, and dissolves into formlessness when we would most like to be precise.”

“…I noticed a woman whose face was a sea voyage I had not the courage to attempt.”

“That night two lovers whispering under the lead canopy of the church were killed by their own passion. Their effusion of words, unable to escape through the Saturnian discipline of lead, so filled the spaces of the loft that the air was all driven away. The lovers suffocated, but when the sacristan opened the tiny door the worlds tumbled him over in their desire to be free, and were seen flying across the city in the shape of doves.”