Kamand Kojouri

"My love, you are driving the entire world mad. The nightingales are committing suicide one by one out of jealousy of your voice. The roses took one glance at your beauty and folded themselves from shame. The trees now only whisper your name and the sky hasn’t stopped crying since you looked up. Have pity on us, my love. We have already broken all the mirrors and glass out of fear that you will forget us and fall in love with yourself once you see what we all cannot stop seeing."

"I do not write about love as if I have invented it. I write about love because thoughts of you inspire self-forgetfulness. And because writing about you gives birth to a star. These stars sit inside me where there was once darkness."

"What a terrifyingly beautiful thought that you are the beginning of forever. I love you, and life for me has just begun."

"I am looking for the one I can’t fool."

"I will speak of love until you go mad and join me in my mad worship of love."

"Speak to me: I will spend my lifetime trying to understand you."

"Like a child who saves their favourite food on the plate for last, I try to save all thoughts of you for the end of the day so I can dream with the taste of you on my tongue."

"I will look for you in every lifetime and love you there."

"They want us to be afraid. They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes. They want us to barricade our doors and hide our children. Their aim is to make us fear life itself! They want us to hate. They want us to hate 'the other'. They want us to practice aggression and perfect antagonism. Their aim is to divide us all! They want us to be inhuman. They want us to throw out our kindness. They want us to bury our love and burn our hope. Their aim is to take all our light! They think their bricked walls will separate us. They think their damned bombs will defeat us. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that my soul and your soul are old friends. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that when they cut you I bleed. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that we will never be afraid, we will never hate and we will never be silent for life is ours!"

"Nothing belongs to itself anymore. These trees are yours because you once looked at them. These streets are yours because you once traversed them. These coffee shops and bookshops, these cafés and bars, their sole owner is you. They gave themselves so willingly, surrendering to your perfume. You sang with the birds and they stopped to listen to you. You smiled at the sheepish stars and they fell into your hair. The sun and moon, the sea and mountain, they have all left from heartbreak. Nothing belongs to itself anymore. You once spoke to Him, and then God became yours. He sits with us in darkness now to plot how to make you ours. K. K."

"Poetry isn’t an island, it is the bridge. Poetry isn’t a ship, it is the lifeboat. Poetry isn’t swimming. Poetry is water."

"You know how it goes:at some point in your life, you fell in love with someone and had a glimpse of God. Then you abandoned life and loverand started celebratingyour love for God."

"The hardest thing in the world is to let go of who you once thought you were and to manifest your true self, at the risk of being unloved. This is self-actualization."

"It’s so easy to lose faith and become lost in all of the politics of the world. That’s why we need the arts. To sublimate our frustration and anger into something beautiful. Freud called sublimation a virtuous defence mechanism because it is in the arts that we can find our humanity."

"If today is not your day, then be happy for this day shall never return. And if today is your day, then be happy now for this day shall never return."

"You have no choice. You must leave your ego on the doorstep before you enter love."

"Forget your voice, sing!Forget your feet, dance!Forget your life, live!Forget yourself and be!"

"“I am looking for the one I can’t fool.”"

"“I will speak of love until you go mad and join me in my mad worship of love.”"

"“You have no choice. You must leave your ego on the doorstep before you enter love.”"