And take my hands, they'll understand
Take my heart, pull it apart
And take my brain, or what remains
And throw it all away
'Cause I've grown tired of this body
A cumbersome and heavy body

"I'd like to drop my trousers to the world
I am a man of means, of slender means"

"And when I'm lying in my bed
I think about life
And I think about death
And neither one particularly appeals to me

And if the day came
When I felt a natural emotion
I'd get such a shock I'd probably lie
In the middle of the street and die
I'd lie down and die"

Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.

–Oscar Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Painting: Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May by Thomas Mostyn (1864-1930)

Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality.

–Oscar Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray.

It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man--that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

–Oscar Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray.

I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.

–Oscar Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray.

I want a god
as my accomplice
who spends nights
in houses
of ill repute
and gets up late
on Saturdays

a god
who whistles
through the streets
and trembles
before the lips
of his lover

a god
who waits in line
at the entrance
of movie houses
and likes to drink
café au lait

a god
who spits
blood from
tuberculosis and
doesn’t even have
enough for bus fare

a god
knocked
unconscious
by the billy club
of a policeman
at a demonstration

a god
who pisses
out of fear
before the flaring
electrodes
of torture

a god
who hurts
to the last
bone and
bites the air
in pain

a jobless god
a striking god
a hungry god
a fugitive god
an exiled god
an enraged god

a god
who longs
from jail
for a change
in the order
of things

I want a
more godlike
god

–FRANCISCO X. ALARCÓN