Prairie Sunsets with Pablo Neruda

For years, I believed Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) to be the soft, starry-eyed poet of the love struck. Of course he was, but this Nobel Prize in Literature (1971) recipient was so much more.

“He who becomes the slave of habit, who follows the same routes every day, who never changes pace, who does not risk and change the color of his clothes, who does not speak and does not experience, dies slowly.”

― Pablo Neruda

“Give me, for my life, all lives, give me all the pain of everyone, I’m going to turn it into hope.”

― Pablo Neruda

“Let’s try and avoid death in small doses, reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort far greater than the simple fact of breathing.”

— Pablo Neruda

“In one kiss, you’ll know all I haven’t said.”

— Pablo Neruda

“He who does not travel, who does not read, who does not listen to music, who does not find grace in himself, she who does not find grace in herself, dies slowly.”

― Pablo Neruda

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

— Pablo Neruda

“He who has nothing — it has been said many times — has nothing to lose but his chains.”

— Pablo Neruda

“If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life.”

— Pablo Neruda

“And that’s why I have to go back to so many places there to find myself and constantly examine myself with no witness but the moon and then whistle with joy, ambling over rocks and clods of earth, with no task but to live, with no family but the road.”

— Pablo Neruda

“It is not so much light that falls over the world extended by your body its suffocating snow, as brightness, pouring itself out of you, as if you were burning inside. Under your skin the moon is alive.”

— Pablo Neruda

“My soul is an empty carousel at sunset.”

— Pablo Neruda

“Do you not see that the apple tree flowers only to die in the apple?”

— Pablo Neruda

“Give me your hand out of the depths sown by your sorrows.”

— Pablo Neruda

“So I wait for you like a lonely house
till you will see me again and live in me.
Till then my windows ache.”

— Pablo Neruda