Rod McKuen Quotes

Strangers are just friends waiting to happen

Cats have it all - admiration, an endless sleep, and company only when they want it.

We come into the world alone. We go away the same. We're meant to spend the interlude between in closeness or so we tell ourselves. But it's a long way from the morning to the evening.

Even when you feel you've reached the end or edge of life, hold on. Life itself will ultimately take care of you.

Extending your hand is extending yourself.

It's nice sometimes to open up the heart a little and let some hurt come in. It proves you're still alive.

I cannot speculate on what our cluttered mind will save- sleepy Sundays, or a nosebleed after love. I know only the dying heart needs the nourishment of memory to live beyond too many winters.

The gifts that one receives for giving are so immeasurable that it is almost an injustice to accept them.

If you love somebody, tell them.

Do not ask the definition of a friend. He/She is that one without whose company death and dying set in earlier and living is made more pleasurable.

The journey back is always longer than the forward run.

There's no misery in not being loved, only in not loving.

Love is a sweet thing caught a momentand held in a golden eye.

There is no other way to find ourselves but in each others faces.

People are not born bastards. They have to work at it.

It happens just because we need to want and to be wanted too, when love is here or gone to lie down in the darkness and listen to the warm.

Unless you call attention to your presence who will know you're there? Even a country has to weave and wave a flag as proof of its existence.

I've come to terms with it, it knows I know.

To understand others you should get behind their eyes and walk down their spines.

Everybody has the answers or they'll make them up for you. Just once I'd like to hear a brand-new question.

Poetry is fact given over to imagery.

Once I thought ideas were exceptions not the rule. That is not so. Ideas are so plentiful that they ride on air. You have only to reach out and snatch one.

A poet can't afford to be aloof. The tools of his trade are the people he bumps up against.

and if the world breaks down, I'll be around.

Never fear being alone, because you never are.

People often say 'I live for my art.' Bullshit! If you are given a talent it's to be used. It's not in the private domain.

Watch the indolent butterfly playing on the tall flower in the yard and think about the sun going down. It always does you know.

If I could do it over, I'd do better.

I have never known a cat that couldn't quiet me down just by walking slowly past my chair.

People ask me why I connected. It was presumptuous of me to say, but I'm Everyman. The difference is I put my thoughts into words.

The world needs writers. We will always be necessary. There are few professions that can claim that distinction.

We will all wake up semi-angels, If we wake at all.

Laws and machines are shaped to fit the classes.

I try not to put messages in my songs. My only message is man's communication with his fellow man. I want to narrow the gap of strangeness and alienation.

I went back to look for you.Not understanding the language of hello, I thought I’d speak it just the same.

Unless you call attentionto your presencewho will know you're there?Even a countryhas to weave and wave a flagas proof of its existence.

I have fallen in love with the worldAnd I am aware that I have chosenthe most dangerous lover of them all.