For a while after the rape, I was afraid of my own sexuality, because I got raped right about the time when I started developing physically.

There aren't many poster children for cool angst. Everybody thinks it's cool if you're the bad girl.

I really don't think anything I do is a mistake. It could be if I didn't learn from it.

It's calm under the waves in the blue of my oblivion.

If I respect myself and believe in what I'm doing, no one can touch me.

Rape is the most humiliating thing that can be done to you; it's the most vulnerable that you can be. But once I realized that, I became a stronger person and faced all my fears.

Nothing that you do will ever feel good if you let people convince you that you have no choice.

Everybody sees me as this sullen and insecure little thing. Those are just the sides of me that I feel it's necessary to show because no one else seems to be showing them.

The way I feel about music is that there is no right and wrong. Only true and false.

You fondle my trigger, then you blame my gun

I was screaming into the canyon at the moment of my death; the echo I created outlasted my last breath.

Inspiration comes of working every day.

Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars. I will not forget thy word. Amen.

Don't let your 'future success' dim the beauty and light that's in front of you right now.

So, one way or another, I found myself in a few movies. I take it seriously when I'm on the set, but I don't take myself seriously as an actor.

I was a much better writer than I was an athlete. My college coach told me flat out, he said, "Deford, you write basketball better than you play it."

...every man shares the responsibility and the guilt of the society to which he belongs.

Passionate grave thought, belief enhanced, ritual returned and magic.

Self-knowledge is a dangerous thing, tending to make man shallow or insane.

Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down.

Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers: It is the only prayer that deserves an answer—good, honest, noble work.