Don't turn over rocks if you don't want to see the pale creatures who live under them.

She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.

The phoenix must burn to emerge.

Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.

You were my home, Mother. I had no home but you

Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.

I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots--prostitute, housewife, saint--like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.

I couldn't imagine owning beauty like my mothers. I wouldn't dare.

Oleander time, she said. Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind.

Her hatred glittered irresistibly. I could see it, the jewel, it was sapphire, it was the cold lakes of Norway.

Don't turn over the rocks if you don't want to see the pale creatures who live under them.

Sometimes I look in the mirror and think I'm really good looking. Then other times I think my body's all wrong.

You'll never cross an emotional bridge, if you keep rushing back to the other side.

Beauty of expression is so akin to the voice of the sea.

When a body acts upon another one, it is always immediately or through some intermediate body; this intermediate body is in general what one calls a machine.

You choose how to feel and act every moment of every day. The moment you accept this responsibility completely, you gain total control over your life.

Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. At the same instant we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all sorrow and all winters we are alive on the earth.

The Buddha taught that we're not actually in control, which is a pretty scary idea. But when you let things be as they are, you will be a much happier, more balanced, compassionate person.

Most composers and arrangers these days use computer programs and keyboards, but I'm one of those dinosaurs that still writes it down on score paper and still dreams it up in his ear first.

By now all rock bands are wise enough to be suspicious of music industry scum

I've crippled more people than polio.