I wrote about my love, my ishq, on bloodstained paper day after day, Manto bhai, my hand became numb, but still I wrote. I knew my ghazals would provide comfort to many people one day.

Misery vanishes when you get used to miseryI suffered so much that it became easy

If you have to die like a worm, die that way, complaining will not fetch you anything extra.

The seed of death sprouts within the desire for union.

And by then I had understood that any ghazal that could not pierce your heart completely and instantly, like an arrow, had no value as a work of art.

At the end of the day, soldiers can fight wars and raze cities, but they can never usher in freedom