You can’t re-create the first time you promise to love someone or the first time you feel loved by another. You cannot relive the sensation of fear, admiration, self-consciousness, passion, and desire all mixed into one because it never happens twice.

‘I used to think I was poor because I didn’t have any shoes, and then I met a man with no feet.’ ”

You can’t re-create the first time you promise to love someone or the first time you feel loved by another. You cannot relive the sensation of fear, admiration, self-consciousness, passion, and desire all mixed into one because it never happens twice. You chase it like the first high for the rest of your life. It doesn’t mean you can’t love another

The present is our own. The right-this-second, the here-and-now, this moment before the next, is ours for the taking. It’s the only free gift the universe has to offer. The past doesn’t belong to us anymore, and the future is just a fantasy, never guaranteed. But the present is ours to own.

You chase it like the first high for the rest of your life. It doesn’t mean you can’t love another or move on; it just means that the one spontaneous moment, the split second that you took the leap, when your heart was racing and your mind was muddled with What ifs?—that moment—will never happen the same way again. It will never feel as intense as

sex is perfectly selfless and selfish all at once.

The only thing you can do is choose the person you love, be kind to others, and make your brutally short stint on earth as pleasant as possible.

‘Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.’

The first time someone young and vibrant dies—someone you look up to, someone you relate to—it blows you back, right off your feet. Oh, fuck, we’re all gonna die, nobody knows when, nobody knows how, you think. And in that moment, you realize how little control you have over your own destiny. From the time you’re born, you have no control; you can’