Federico Garcia Lorca

In Spain, the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world.

The artist, and particularly the poet, is always an anti-social being, a strange animal that one must either love or hate, but whom one cannot ignore.

A poet must be a professor of the five senses.

The theater is a school of weeping and of laughter, a forum where man is free to question norms and explain the eternal hearts of man and woman.

I will always be on the side of those who have nothing and who are not even allowed to enjoy the nothing they have in peace.

The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink and be refreshed.

To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can inflict on ourselves.

The only way to be happy is to be crazy.

The purpose of poetry is to find the voice that is hidden in silence.

I want to sleep the sleep of apples, to get away from the clamor of cemeteries.

The duende is a power, not a working; a struggle, not a thought. I have heard an old master guitarist say: 'The duende is not in the throat; the duende surges up from the soles of the feet.'

The most beautiful curve on a woman's body is her smile.

My heart is a wounded bird that seeks the highest branches.

The only difference between me and the madmen is that I am not mad.

Poetry is not a thing that can be read with the mind, but with the heart.

I am a poet, and I hate the lie. I hate the lie more than death.

The greatest mystery of all is the hidden smile of a dead man.

Every step we take on earth brings us closer to a new world.

The butterfly is the symbol of resurrection.

I want to be a poet, not a professor.