Gabriel Machado

“She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.”
― J.D. Salinger, A Girl I Knew

“Se tens um coração de ferro, bom proveito.
O meu, fizeram-no de carne, e sangra todo o dia.”
― José Saramago

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
― Walt Whitman

“J'ai fait ces vers là hier, pendant la récréation; je suis entré dans la chapelle, je me suis enfermé dans un confessionnal, et là, ma jeune poesie a pu palpiter et s'envoler, dans le rêve et le silence, vers les sphères de l'amour. Puis, comme on vient m'enlever mes moindres papiers dans mes poches, la nuit et le jour, j'ai cousu ces vers en bas de mon dernier vêtement, celvi qui touche immédiatement à ma peu, et, pendant l'étude, je tire, sous mes habits, ma poesie sur mon coeur, et je la presse longuement en rêvant...

I wrote these verses yesterday, during recess. I went into the chapel and closed myself up in a confessional. There in dreams and silence my young poetry could palpitate and fly off toward the skies of love. Then, since they come day and night and rob me of whatever papers are in my pockets, I sewed these verses into the lower part of my underclothing, which is closest to my skin, and during study hour, I pull, under my clothes, my poetry over my heart, and I press it there for a long time as I dream...”
― Arthur Rimbaud