Federico Garcia Lorca Quotes & Sayings

We're all curious about what might hurt us. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Small unhurt sorrows approach the hospitals
and every day the dead take off a suit of blood.
The architectures of frost,
the lyres and moans that escape the tiny leaves
in autumn, soaking the final slopes,
died out in the blackness of felt hats. — Federico Garcia Lorca

There's no doubt that I really have a feeling for the theater. These past few days it has occurred to me to do a comedy whose chief characters are photographic enlargements. Those people we see in doorways. Newlyweds, sergeants, dead girls, an anonymous crowd full of mustaches and wrinkles. It should be terrible. If I focus it well, it will possess pathos without consolation. In the midst of those people I will place an authentic fairy. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Ella viene vestida
Con un traje de alcaldesa,
De papel de chocolate
con los collares de almendras.

She comes dressed
In the robe of a Mayoress
Made of chocolate paper
with an almond necklace.

El viento vuleve desnudo
la esquina de la sorpresa,
en la noche platinoche,
noche que noche nochera.

Naked, the wind turns
the corner of the surprise
in the silver-dark night
the night benighted by nightfall. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Hour of Stars (1920) The round silence of night, one note on the stave of the infinite. Ripe with lost poems, I step naked into the street. The blackness riddled by the singing of crickets: sound, that dead will-o'-the-wisp, that musical light perceived by the spirit. A thousand butterfly skeletons sleep within my walls. A wild crowd of young breezes over the river. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The wounds were burning like suns at five in the afternoon, and the crowd broke the windows At five in the afternoon. Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon! It was five by all the clocks! It was five in the shade of the afternoon! — Federico Garcia Lorca

To see you naked is to remember the Earth,
the smooth Earth, clean of horses,
the Earth without reeds, pure form,
closed to the future, confine of silver.
To see you naked is to understand the desire
of rain that looks for the delicate waist,
or the fever of the broad-faced sea
that cannot find the light of its cheek.
Blood will ring through the bedrooms
and will come with flaming swords,
but you will not know the hiding places
of the violet or the heart of the toad.
Your womb is a struggle of roots.
Your lips are a dawn without contour.
Under the lukewarm roses of the bed
the dead men moan, awaiting their return. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The children watch
a distant point.
Lamps go out.
Some blind girls
question the moon
and spirals of grief
rise in the air.
The mountains survey
a distant point.

- After Passing By — Federico Garcia Lorca

Understand one single day fully, so you can love every night. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The round silence of night,
one note on the stave
of the infinite.

Ripe with lost poems,
I step naked into the street.
The blackness riddled
by the singing of crickets:
sound,
that dead
will-o'-the-wisp,
that musical light
perceived
by the spirit.

A thousand butterfly skeletons
sleep within my walls.

A wild crowd of young breezes
over the river.

- Hour of Stars (1920) — Federico Garcia Lorca

Green how I want you green. Green wind. Green branches. — Federico Garcia Lorca

What shall I say about poetry? What shall I say about those clouds, or about the sky? Look; look at them; look at it! And nothing more. Don't you understand anything about poetry? Leave that to the critics and the professors. For neither you, nor I, nor any poet knows what poetry is. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Death, vicious death, Leave a green branch for love. — Federico Garcia Lorca

My tongue is pierced with glass. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extra human architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The dancer's trembling heart must bring everything into harmony, from the tips of her shoes to the flutter of her eyelashes, from the ruffles of her dress to the incessant play of her fingers. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The one thing life has taught me is that most people spend their lives bottled up inside their houses doing the things they hate. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Every Song
Every song
is the remains
of love.
Every light
the remains
of time.
A knot
of time.
And every sigh
the remains
of a cry. — Federico Garcia Lorca

But hurry! so united, entwined,
mouths broken by love and soul bitten,
time will find us destroyed — Federico Garcia Lorca

Wish"

Just your hot heart,
nothing more.

My Paradise, a field,
no nightingales,
no strings,
a river, discrete,
and a little fountain.

Without the spurs,
of the wind, in the branches,
without the star,
that wants to be a leaf.

An enormous light
that will be
the flow
of the Other,
in a field of broken gazes.

A still calm
where our kisses,
sonorous circles
of echoes,
will open, far-off.

And your hot heart,
nothing more. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The world is a shoulder of dark meat (black flesh of an old mule). And the light is on the other side. — Federico Garcia Lorca

A nation that does not support and encourage its theater is - if not dead - dying; just as a theater that does not capture with laughter and tears the social and historical pulse, the drama of its people, the genuine color of the spiritual and natural landscape, has no right to call itself theater; but only a place for amusement. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The bride, the white bride today a maiden, tomorrow a wife. — Federico Garcia Lorca

New York is something awful, something monstrous. I like to walk the streets, lost, but I recognize that New York is the world's greatest lie. New York is Senegal with machines. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The groom is like a flower of gold. When he walks, blossoms at his feet unfold. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Everything's a fan. Brother, open up your arms. God is the pivot. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Woodcutter. Cut my shadow from me. Free me from the torment of being without fruit. Why was I born among mirrors? Day goes round and round me. The night copies me in all its stars. I want to live without my reflection. And then let me dream that ants and thistledown are my leaves and my parrots. — Federico Garcia Lorca

If lilies would grow
backwards,
if roses would grow
backwards,
if all those roots
could see the stars
& the dead not close
their eyes,
we would become like swans. — Federico Garcia Lorca

But now I am no longer I,
nor is my house any longer my house. — Federico Garcia Lorca

In the borough, three boys circled a white camel
that wept because at dawn
there was no other way except through the needle's eye!
Oh cross! Oh, nails! Oh, thorn!
Oh, thorn driven to the bone until the planet rust to pieces! — Federico Garcia Lorca

The dreadful nostalgia for a wasted life,
the fatal feeling that you were born too late,
or the restless hope for an impossible morning
with the nearby restlessness of the flesh's ache — Federico Garcia Lorca

My poetry is a game. My life is a game. But I am not a game. — Federico Garcia Lorca

I denounce everyone
who ignores the other half,
the half that can't be redeemed — Federico Garcia Lorca

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 in drinking understand themselves. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The artist, and particularly the poet, is always an anarchist in the best sense of the word. He must heed only the call that arises within him from three strong voices: the voice of death, with all its foreboding, the voice of love and the voice of art. — Federico Garcia Lorca

At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A frail of lime ready prepared
at five in the afternoon.
The rest was death, and death alone — Federico Garcia Lorca

Little black horse. Where are you taking your dead rider? — Federico Garcia Lorca

Just as the light and weightless vegetation of saltpeter floats over the old walls of houses as soon as the owner gets careless, so the literary vocation springs up in you. — Federico Garcia Lorca

All one's personality is embedded in gloves and hats after they've been good and used. Show me a glove and I'll tell you the character of its owner. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The important thing in life is to let the years carry us along. — Federico Garcia Lorca

As I have not worried to be born, I do not worry to die. — Federico Garcia Lorca

But two has never been a number
because it's only an anguish and its shadow,
it's only a guitar where love feels how hopeless it is,
it's the proof of someone else's infinity,
and the walls around a dead man,
and the scourging of a new resurrection that will never end. — Federico Garcia Lorca

I have often lost myself in the sea, ears full of newly cut flowers, tongue full of love and agony. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The moon carries the masks of meningitis into bedrooms, fills the wombs of pregnant women with cold water and, as soon as I'm not careful, throws handfuls of grass on my shoulders. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Death, lonely death, Beneath the withered leaves. — Federico Garcia Lorca

I want to sleep for half a second,
a second, a minute, a century,
but I want everyone to know that I'm still alive ... — Federico Garcia Lorca

In each thing there is an insinuation of death. Stillness, silence, serenity are all apprenticeships. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Every song
is the remains
of love.

Every light
the remains
of time.
A knot
of time.

And every sigh
the remains
of a cry.

- Every Song — Federico Garcia Lorca

My God, I have come with the seeds of questions. I planted them, and they never flowered. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The river Guadalquivir
Flows between oranges and olives
The two rivers of Granada
Descend from the snow to the wheat

Oh my love!
Who went and never returned

The river Guadalquivir
Has beards of maroon
The two rivers of Granada
One a cry the other blood

Oh my love!
Who vanished into thin air — Federico Garcia Lorca

I am the immense shadow of my tears — Federico Garcia Lorca

There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers' battle with the heavens that cover them. — Federico Garcia Lorca

A light which lives on what the flames devour,
a grey landscape surrounding me with scorch,
a crucifixion by a single wound,
a sky and earth that darken by each hour,
a sob of blood whose red ribbon adorns
a lyre without a pulse, and oils the torch,
a tide which stuns and strands me on the reef,
a scorpion scrambling, stinging in my chest--
this is the wreath of love, this bed of thorns
is where I dream of you stealing my rest,
haunting these sunken ribs cargoed with grief.
I sought the peak of prudence, but I found
the hemlock-brimming valley of your heart,
and my own thirst for bitter truth and art.

- Stigmata of Love — Federico Garcia Lorca

At the heart of all great art is an essential melancholy. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Love is the kiss in the quiet nest while the leaves are trembling, mirrored in the water. — Federico Garcia Lorca

But hurry, let's entwine ourselves as one, our mouth broken, our soul bitten by love, so time discovers us safely destroyed. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The day that hunger is eradicated from the earth there will be the greatest spiritual explosion the world has ever known. Humanity cannot imagine the joy that will burst into the world. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Theatre is poetry that rises from the book and becomes human enough to talk and shout, weep and despair — Federico Garcia Lorca

Paint me a heaven of love with your bloodied mouth. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The weeping of the guitar
begins.
The goblets of dawn
are smashed.
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
Useless
to silence it.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps monotonously
as water weeps
as the wind weeps
over snowfields.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps for distant
things.
Hot southern sands
yearning for white camellias.
Weeps arrow without target
evening without morning
and the first dead bird
on the branch.
Oh, guitar!
Heart mortally wounded
by five swords. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Out in the sky, no one sleeps. No one, no one.
No one sleeps.
In a graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of an arid landscape in his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.
Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the snow's edge with the voices of dead dahlias.
But there is no oblivion; no dream:
only flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a tangle of new veins,
and those who hurt will hurt without rest
and those who are afraid of death will carry it on their shoulders. — Federico Garcia Lorca

I sing your restless longing for the statue, your fear of the feelings that await you in the street. I sing the small sea siren who sings to you, riding her bicycle of corals and conches. But above all I sing a common thought that joins us in the dark and golden hours. The light that blinds our eyes is not art. Rather it is love, friendship, crossed swords. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Even money, which shines so much, spits sometimes. — Federico Garcia Lorca

What's the furthest corner? Because that's where I want to be, alone with the only thing that I love. — Federico Garcia Lorca

If blue is dream
what then innocence?
What awaits the heart
if Love bears no arrows? — Federico Garcia Lorca

I've often lost myself,
in order to find the burn that keeps everything awake — Federico Garcia Lorca

I'll always be happy if they'd leave me alone in that delightful and unknown furthest corner, apart from struggles, putrefactions and nonsense; the ultimate corner of sugar and toast, where the mermaids catch the branches of the willows and the heart opens to a flute's sharpness. — Federico Garcia Lorca

If I told you the whole story it would never end ... What's happened to me has happened to a thousand woman. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Today in my heart a vague trembling of stars and all roses are as white as my pain. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Stigmata of Love
A light which lives on what the flames devour,
a grey landscape surrounding me with scorch,
a crucifixion by a single wound,
a sky and earth that darken by each hour,
a sob of blood whose red ribbon adorns
a lyre without a pulse, and oils the torch,
a tide which stuns and strands me on the reef,
a scorpion scrambling, stinging in my chest
this is the wreath of love, this bed of thorns
is where I dream of you stealing my rest,
haunting these sunken ribs cargoed with grief.
I sought the peak of prudence, but I found
the hemlock-brimming valley of your heart,
and my own thirst for bitter truth and art. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Seville is a tower full of fine archers ... Under the arch of the sky, across the clear plain, she shoots the constant arrow of her river. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The theater has to impose itself on the public, and not the public on the theater ... The word "Art" should be written everywhere, in the auditorium and in the dressing rooms, before the word "Business" gets written there. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The day hunger disappears, the world will see the greatest spiritual explosion humanity has ever seen. — Federico Garcia Lorca

We're all like the little sailor. From the harbors we hear the strains of accordions and the murky soapy noises of the docks, from the mountains we receive the dish of silence that the shepherds eat, but we don't hear more than our own distances. And what distances without end and without doors and without mountains! — Federico Garcia Lorca

What matters most has an ultimate metallic quality of death. The chasuble and the wagon wheel, the razor and the prickly beards of shepherds, the bare moon, a fly, humid cupboards, rubble piles, the images of saints covered in lace, quicklime, and the wounding edges of the rooflines and watchtowers. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The terrible thing is that the crowd that fills the street believes that the world will always be the same and that it is their duty to keep that huge machine running, day and night, forever. This is what comes of a Protestant morality, that I, as a (thank God) typical Spaniard, found unnerving. — Federico Garcia Lorca

And I tell you that you should open yourselves to hearing an authentic poet, of the kind whose bodily senses were shaped in a world that is not our own and that few people are able to perceive. A poet closer to death than to philosophy, closer to pain than to intelligence, closer to blood than to ink. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The duende ... Where is the duende? Through the empty archway a wind of the spirit enters, blowing insistently over the heads of the dead, in search of new landscapes and unknown accents: a wind with the odour of a child's saliva, crushed grass, and medusa's veil, announcing the endless baptism of freshly created things. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The night above. We two. Full moon.
I started to weep, you laughed.
Your scorn was a god, my laments
moments and doves in a chain.
The night below. We two. Crystal of pain.
You wept over great distances.
My ache was a clutch of agonies
over your sickly heart of sand.
Dawn married us on the bed,
our mouths to the frozen spout
of unstaunched blood.
The sun came through the shuttered balcony
and the coral of life opened its branches
over my shrouded heart.

- Night of Sleepless Love — Federico Garcia Lorca

The mirror is the mother dew, the book of desiccated twilights, echo become flesh. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Old women can see through walls. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Gacela of the Flight"

I have lost myself in the sea many tunes
with my ear full of freshly cut flowers,
with my tongue full of love awl agony.
I have lost myself in the sea many times
as I lose myself in the heart of certain children.

There is no one who in giving a kiss
does not feel the smile of faceless people,
and no one who in touching a newborn child
forgets the motionless skulls of horses.

Because the roses search in the forehead
for a hard landscape of hone
and the hands of man hate no other purpose
than to imitate the roots below the earth.

As I lose myself in the heart of certain children,
I have lost myself in the sea many times.
Ignorant of the water I go seeking
a death full of light to consume me. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Fire is fed by fire. The same small flame destroys Two stalks of wheat at once. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Here I want to see those men of hard voice.
Those that break horses and dominate rivers;
those men of sonorous skeleton who sing
with a mouth full of sun and flint. — Federico Garcia Lorca

In the garden I will die. In the rosebush they will kill me. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Night of Sleepless Love The night above. We two. Full moon. I started to weep, you laughed. Your scorn was a god, my laments moments and doves in a chain. The night below. We two. Crystal of pain. You wept over great distances. My ache was a clutch of agonies over your sickly heart of sand. Dawn married us on the bed, our mouths to the frozen spout of unstaunched blood. The sun came through the shuttered balcony and the coral of life opened its branches over my shrouded heart. — Federico Garcia Lorca

With their souls of patent leather, they come down the road. Hunched and nocturnal, where they breathe they impose, silence of dark rubber, and fear of fine sand. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Besides black art, there is only automation and mechanization. — Federico Garcia Lorca

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. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The night below. We two. Crystal of pain.
You wept over great distances.
My ache was a clutch of agonies
over your sickly heart of sand. — Federico Garcia Lorca

I want to be a poet, from head to toe, living and dying by poetry. — Federico Garcia Lorca

I'm afraid to be on this shore a trunk without limbs, and what I most regret is not to have flower, pulp, or clay for the worm of my suffering. — Federico Garcia Lorca

While the poet wrestles with the horses on his brain and the sculptor wounds his eyes on the hard spark of alabaster, the dancer battles the air around her, air that threatens at any moment to destroy her harmony or to open huge open empty spaces where her rhythm will be annihilated. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Like a snake, my heart
has shed its skin.
I hold it here in my hand,
full of honey and wounds.

- New Heart — Federico Garcia Lorca

In Spain the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Never let me lose the marvel
of your statue-like eyes, or the accent
the solitary rose of your breath
places on my cheek at night.
I am afraid of being, on this shore,
a branchless trunk, and what I most regret
is having no flower, pulp, or clay
for the worm of my despair.
If you are my hidden treasure,
if you are my cross, my dampened pain,
if I am a dog, and you alone my master,
never let me lose what I have gained,
and adorn the branches of your river
with leaves of my estranged Autumn. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The snow is falling on the deserted field of my life, and my hopes, which roam far, are afraid of becoming frozen or lost. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The only things that the United States has given to the world are skyscrapers, jazz, and cocktails. That is all. And in Cuba, in our America, they make much better cocktails. — Federico Garcia Lorca

A poet must be a professor of the five senses and must open doors among them. — Federico Garcia Lorca

My head is full of fire
and grief and my tongue
runs wild, pierced
with shards of glass. — Federico Garcia Lorca