40 phrases by Matilde Campilho to get to know this Portuguese writer

When I couldn’t stand the silence any longer, I listened to the songs.

Longing is a heartbeat that bursts like this twenty-eight times from my disaster-tattooed shoulder to the rose dangling from her mouth.

Revolutions have always been the right place to discover peace: maybe because no house is safe, maybe because no body is safe.

Art doesn’t save the world, it saves the minute.

So I think love is the opposite of the end.

Only you knew how many flowers I wore, because now I know you spent your nights counting. God doesn’t sleep and neither do you.

I learned about death the same day I knew that love is important, but it’s not immutable.

Pay attention to that knot in your stomach at the very moment you are waiting for your lover.

I read about birds and came to know that birds measure distance in body units and not meters: the density of each body doesn’t matter, what matters is the distance between them.

I discovered that the axis of a village could very well be the axis of a woman’s body.

One day you write to your parents about love. Forty days later, your parents write to you talking about fishing nets and the danger of fishing nets.

We are making love useful, extending the arms of the almond trees, extending the arms of the jacarandas, breaking the useless frontiers and making the world a giant forest.

I looked more closely at the design of the structure and discovered: the human race is all glitter.

My face is aging before me. I recognize my gods, and Jonah is supposed to have recognized the whale too.

I get closer and closer to my ascendant as I make peace with my sun. I recognize my heroes those who came before and those who will come later.

It takes much more than certain weather conditions for love to flow.

Certain songs awaken in us the desire for a story that has already happened but that will never happen again. Some stories are the exact length of a rock song, others are divided into chants. In between, you can buy popcorn.

That’s how you thought I’d look in the world with the body of a beast dressed with a pencil resting on my ear.

I could cross town on my bike to see you dance. And that says a lot about my rib cage.

Death is the opposite of justice.

Walter Benjamin was right about circles—the more you spin around love, the more love expands.

This joy thing is still going to work out very well.

hold on. Make sure to polish your laughter, especially at dusk. Fine-tune your aim daily and pray that shooting is never necessary. There is no better protection than the awareness that we can decide to shoot from the side.

Because passion is not at all the most important thing, but it is the straw through which you can see that the world is made up of paper constructions.

As far as love is concerned, beyond passion and beyond desire: no one else will drown.

It is on earth that the conscience of the world is, and it is necessary to listen to its noise in order to act in truth.

I called my first love and told him about this very death. I remember that he was silent for a long time and then the sound of a dry throat could be heard across the country.

I watch the whole scene and think that this vision, real or invented, is much worse than the truth being slapped.

I think tenderness is important.

It makes my heart go down, but I know very well that you love me for the eyes and never for the things that one day die of rot, internal areas and such.

I could write your name 70 times in a row. But that wouldn’t take away the longing I feel to say your name between salt and teeth.

I still don’t know how to make a poem, but at least I know how to fold clothes.

Few people counted a zebra’s stripes, but everyone who did came back different.

A half-open door does not let you see the real.

We are the children of summer—we are the inverse of darkness.

That would in no way improve the lack of your body within the invisible shadow that sits next to me in the restaurant every day at 11 am.

Where are you going I don’t know. Actually, I don’t care anymore, because on the way to the post-mortem I happened to come face to face with life.

I will learn to love houses when I understand that houses are made of people who were made by people and that they contain the possibility of making people.