Quotes by Pablo Neruda

I stalk certain words... I catch them in mid-flight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set myself in front of the dish, they have a crystalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives... I stir them, I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them... I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, like pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves... Everything exists in the word.

La heradera del dia destruida.(The heiress of the destroyed day.)

A book,a book fullof human touches,of shirts,a bookwithout loneliness, with menand tools,a bookis victory.

Soy el desesperado, la palabra sin ecos, el que lo perdiò todo, y el que todo lo tuvo.

De pronto no puedo decirtelo que yo te debo decir,hombre,perdóname; sabrásque aunque no escuches mis palabrasno me eché a llorar ni a dormiry que contigo estoy sin vertedesde hace tiempo y hasta el fin.I cant just suddenly tell youwhat I should be telling you,friend, forgive me; you knowthat although you dont hear my words,I wasnt asleep or in tears,that I am with you without seeing youfor a good long time and until the end.

Las lágrimas que no se lloranesperan en pequeños lagos?O serán ríos invisiblesque corren hacia la tristeza?

I shivered in thosesolitudeswhen I heardthe voiceofthe saltin the desert.

Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde, te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo: así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera, sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres, tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía, tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.

Where were you then?Who else was there?Saying what?Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly when I am sad and feel you are far away?

yo te amo para comenzar a amarte,para recomenzar el infinitoy para no dejar de amarte nunca:por eso no te amo todavía.

I like for you to be still: it is as though you are absentdistant and full of sorrow as though you had diedOne word then, one smile is enoughAnd Im happy; happy that its not true

And tell me everything, tell chain by chain, and link by link, and step by step; sharpen the knives you kept hidden away, thrust them into my breast, into my hands, like a torrent of sunbursts, an Amazon of buried jaguars, and leave me cry: hours, days and years, blind ages, stellar centuries.

By night, beloved, tie your heart to mineand let them both in dreams defeat the darkness

Over your breasts of motionless current,over your legs of firmness and water,over the permanence and the prideof your naked hairI want to be, my love, now that the tears arethrowninto the raucous baskets where they accumulate,I want to be, my love, alone with a syllableof mangled silver, alone with a tip of your breast of snow.

You are the trembling of time, that passesbetween vertical light and darkened sky,

You, in bloom, heart, beloved,you are like the foliage of the sky over my eyesand I look at you lying on the earth

my beauty, flower by flower, star by star,wave by wave, love, I have counted your body.

My ugly one, I love you for your waist of gold,my beauty, I love you because of a wrinkle on your forehead,love, I love you because you are clear and dark.

I move in the university of the waves.

With which stars do they go on speaking,the rivers that never reach the sea?