Suddenly I realized this was a heart I was watching. How incredibly sad. Not because the heart was beating and couldn’t escape, it wasn’t that. The point was that the heart should not be seen, it should be allowed to beat in secret, hidden from our sight, it was obvious, you understood that when you saw it, a little animal without eyes, it should pound and throb inside your chest unseen.

But when he’s cut, I bleed.

I — my heart — a gaping heart, enthroned in a radiance of blood. It is mine, it is ours. The heart — that wound which we have. I have compassion on myself.

The secrets that may be buried with a human heart.

I have heard, Mr. Holmes, that you can see deeply into the manifold wickedness of the human heart.

Hearts Live By Being Wounded

The heart in his rugged chest was pounding, torn

And a blade twitched into his heart, beginning the slow, massive bleeding he would never be able to stop, no matter what else he might accomplish. He was surprised and puzzled as he walked with that mortal wound in him, for it occurred to him that, although the wound would be the death of him, it would be the life of him too.

The heart of a man is like deep water.

The very heart of him.

When he is wounded, I bleed. {page 262 of John Adams}

It's a saying they have, that a man has a false heart in his mouth for the world to see, another in his breast to show to his special friends and his family, and the real one, the true one, the secret one, which is never known to anyone except to himself alone, hidden only God knows where.

During the genocide, I saw the darkness of a man's heart.

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

- New Heart