All you need is the blues. To me, the blues is the book, it's the bible, it's everything.

Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.

Have a belief in yourself that is bigger than anyone's disbelief.

All you need in the world is love and laughter. That's all anybody needs. To have love in one hand and laughter in the other.

All of art is a search for ways of being, of living life more fully.

Your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel.

You get to the point where your demons, which are terrifying, get smaller and smaller and you get bigger and bigger.

The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is.

Freedom is heavy. You got to put your shoulder to freedom. Put your shoulder to it and hope your back holds up.

Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.

You got to be right with yourself before you can be right with anybody else.

Life and situations will never improve to the point when living a dream becomes most conducive...honestly

A few people of integrity can go a long way.

On a practical level, poetry isn't something anybody has really made a great living at. I might sell some books and, once in a while, someone might pay to hear me read.

One doesn't stay in a state of nirvana by hiding from difficulties. You stay in nirvana by lavishing nirvana on everyone you meet, by giving it away as fast as you receive it.

There are so many brilliant women on television right now.

We are turning everything on this planet into food for humans. We'll eat it and, if we can't eat it, we'll kill it and take its place and just move it out of the way.

Beauty is not a concept. It is the animal joy of the mind.

Unacceptable, maybe. But not unthinkable. Nothing's unthinkable once somebody's thought it.

This [2016] election was lost because a total of 70,000 people - out of 120-130 million votes - in the Rust belt, but as a result America is in the calamity.

What was wrong with communism wasn't aberrant leadership, it was communism.