And I was incapable of living all by myself in those lodgings where I didn't know a soul. It terrified me to sit by myself quietly in my room. I felt frightened, as if I might be set upon or struck by someone at any moment.

The five worst infirmities that afflict the female are indocility, discontent, slander, jealousy, and silliness.

That, if a straight line falling on two straight lines make the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which are the angles less than the two right angles.

How can kindliness rule that man
Who eateth other flesh to increase his own?

There are several challenges facing education generally in Nigeria. There has been a steady decline in standards in the visual arts, as in other disciplines. Today, there are very poor facilities for teaching art in almost all art schools in Nigeria.

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

The fact that Saigyō composed the poem that begins, "I shall be unhappy without loneliness," shows that he made loneliness his master. He also wrote:
In the mountain village
who are you calling, yobuko-bird?
I thought you lived alone.

Where find a soul that does not thrill
   In Kalidasa’s verse to meet
The smooth, inevitable lines
   Like blossom-clusters, honey-sweet?

A full flowering of the arts is only possible when Literature and Art, Philosophy and Science interact with one another. Kalakshetra is among the very few institutions where all such disciplines interact.

I feel lonely as I gaze at the moon. I feel lonely as I think about myself, and I feel lonely as I ponder upon this wretched life of mine. I want to cry out that I am lonely, but no one asks me how I feel.

I am ashamed of the polished words,
so I hide them
throwing rough and crude notes
like the Rondanini Pietà
still raw with matter
on the lines of crystal
like the soul that sparkles in one’s eyes.
...

Irony limits, finitizes, and circumscribes and thereby yields truth, actuality, content; it disciplines and punishes and thereby yields balance and consistency.

The oath on the Quran may have made headlines, but the more significant question is not what book Mamdani swore on. It is what stories, alliances, and blind spots shape the political movements that shaped his rise to office.

People who live in society have learned how to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends. I have no friends. Is that why my flesh is so naked?

Living unloved, to die unknown,
Unwept, untended and alone.

I always wonder why some poets become "international"? I guess they were tremendously good. I think of people like Pablo Neruda. He crossed all sorts of geographical lines. But he was also from that place, located in that place.