I despise my own hypersensitiveness, which requires so much reassurance. It is certainly abnormal to crave so much to be loved and understood.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.

Adolescence is like cactus.

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Life, religion and art all converge in Bali. They have no word in their language for 'artist' or 'art.' Everyone is an artist.

Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

Don't let one cloud obliterate the whole sky.

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source.

You cannot save people. You can only love them.

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.

The human father has to be confronted and recognized as human, as man who created a child and then, by his absence, left the child fatherless and then Godless.

When an invincible weapon deals with an impenetrable defense, war is useless. The wisest decision is to ceasefire and do synergy.

You’re always making up stuff from the past, ” she said. “And the stuff you imagine is always better than the stuff that actually happened.

Some trees grow straight, while others grow gnarled and twisted. Yet none are imperfect. Perfection is merely a perception.

There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.

It's not surprising to me that books ended up playing a central role in my life, but it is somewhat mysterious that poetry did.

My guitar is really tempermental. I don't give up on it though, I'm close to my guitar!

Drink the first. Sip the second slowly. Skip the third.

When I was in college, I had a jazz radio show. I called it 'Excursion on a Wobbly Rail,' after a Cecil Taylor song. I used to run around the Village following Ornette Coleman wherever he played.

Many men and women enjoy popular esteem, not because they are known, but because they are not known.

Don't confuse activity with productivity. Many people are simply busy being busy.