I define influence simply as literary love, tempered by defense. The defenses vary from poet to poet. But the overwhelming presence of love is vital to understanding how great literature works.

Consciousness is the materia poetica that Shakespeare sculpts as Michelangelo sculpts marble. We feel the consciousness of Hamlet or Iago, and our own consciousness strangely expands.

You never really learn much from hearing yourself speak.

It is strangely wonderful to feel the lack of something instead of believing that it was never there in the first place.

Words have the greatest power to inflict everlasting pain. Words have the greatest power to heal the soul.

The maddened four men followed frantically, for it is better to be in the presence of the awful than only within hearing. ("The Black Dog")

.fear aint real..

It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true.

All I ever wanted to do was play competitive golf against the best players in the world.

Happiness is available. Please help yourself to it.

What do people really believe in any more apart from sport and music?

You see, I get such fun out of thinking that I don't want to destroy this most pleasant machine that makes life such a big kick.