...love letters that aren't read fade away. ("Cartographies") - Marjorie Agosín

every writer – or every person that aspires to write – has to become a reader. There’s nothing more beautiful than engaging with a novel, a poem, or an essay. You should not write for others, you should write from the point of authenticity, from your own self, from what you know. You hope that others will be enriched by your writing, but you don’t write for financial reward, recognition, or hitting the “best-seller” list. If you are worried about these things, you’re a different writer, not so much committed to what I think really matters, which is to capture your own voice, to release it and to share it. The most important, what we all struggle with, but is essential, is to be ourselves. As writers, as humans, as friends – to be ourselves.

For me there was happiness in churches, their wax candles giving sermons, their dim lukewarmth, their delicate twilight silence that rustles when the devout make the sign of the cross facing the figure of that barefoot, sweaty man, deathly cold. (first lines of "Wax Candles")

The translation of art, the translation of poetry, however, is the translation of the spirit. A good translator translates what is not said.