Among the verses attributed to him is his saying:

You sent (1) to ask about me—how I had fared, and what … of worry and sorrow(2) I endured after you.
I would not exist, were I to know how I was, nor … would I exist, were I to know how I was not(3)(4).

Judge Ibn Khallikān remarked: “It is also recited as belonging to Sumnūn, not to al-Hallāj.”(5)

Another of his poems runs:

If ever my eye kept vigil or wept for anyone but You, may it never attain what it hoped and longed for(6);
And if my soul should harbor anyone besides You, may it never behold the meadows of desire that bloom upon Your cheeks and in Your paradise(7).

He also said:

The world would beguile me, as though I did not know her state;
The Sovereign has forbidden her illicit things, while I have taken refuge in what is lawful to her.
Finding her impoverished, I granted her pleasures back to her(8).

Al-Hallāj(9) used to vary his clothing: at times he wore the garb of the Sufis, at other times he appeared in shabby dress, and at still other times he donned a soldier’s uniform and kept company with the people of this world(10). Someone(11) once saw him, a wanderer clad in rags with a waterskin and a staff in hand, and asked him, “What is this state?”(12)

He answered in verse:

Should I spend the evening in a threadbare cloak—both garments have worn away upon a noble, free man—
Let not what you behold deceive you, if you see a condition different from my earlier condition.