All I've tried to do (with my writing) is capture the essence of my time.

The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world.

Everything seems an echo of something else.

I think the greatest curse of American society has been the idea of an easy millennialism -- that some new drug, or the next election or the latest in social engineering will solve everything.

Maybe a man has to sell his soul to get the power to do good.

The image that fiction presents is purged of the distractions, confusions and accidents of ordinary life.

Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.

Goodness . . . You got to make it out of badness . . . Because there isn't anything else to make it out of.

The poem . . . is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see-it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life.

It is human defect — to try to know oneself by the self of another.

You have to make the good out of the bad because that is all you have got to make it out of.

The Bronx? No Thonx!

Never be afraid to sit awhile and think.

The one thing which you have to abandon unconditionally is your self.

Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life...And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.

The most realistic blood I've seen is when Marlon Brando gets beat up in On The Waterfront.

two people can sleep in the same bed and still be alone when they close their eyes

...find the courage to break those agreements that are fear-based and claim your personal power.

I have my diehard R&B fans on one side of the spectrum and my diehard pop and dance fans on the other side of the spectrum.

The greatest gift that you can give to others and to yourself is time. Embrace the gift of time whether you give it or receive it.

My mother paid eight dollars a month for rent. When she had it. Mostly we were evicted, because she couldnt afford to pay the eight dollars a month.