I had relationships with men as well as women. I wasn't choosing; I didn't think I had to.

I like to look at how people work together when they are put into stressful situations, when life stops being cozy.

Art can make a difference because it pulls people up short. It says, don't accept things for their face value; you don't have to go along with any of this; you can think for yourself.

I don't know how to answer. I know what I think, but words in the head are like voices underwater. They are distorted.

I felt like a seed in a pomegranate. Some say that the pomegranate was the real apple of Eve, fruit of the womb, I would eat my way into perdition to taste you.

Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalization. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.

Quest is at the heart of what I do-the holy grail, and the terror that you'll never find it, seemed a perfect metaphor for life.

I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them.

Do you fall in love often?" Yes often. With a view, with a book, with a dog, a cat, with numbers, with friends, with complete strangers, with nothing at all.

I would eat my way into perdition to taste you.

Life cannot be calculated. That's the big mistake our civilization made. We never accepted that randomness is not a mistake in the equation -- it is part of the equation.

You ever want to negotiate a hostage situation in Quebec, I'm your man. Send me in for a little parley and the francophone miscreants will flee, hands over bleeding ears.

Jesus lived and died in vain if He did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal law of love. Gandhi, quoted in Merton, p. 38

Use the water of encouragement on someone else's flowers - especially the flowers that are wilted, trampled on, and taken for granted. But don't nourish the weeds.

That girl has done things to your head.'He pats my back, 'Don’t pretend she’s not crawling inside of yours.

With the clothes I design, I think about my friends, how I'd want them to dress, what I'd want them to wear.

I want to build a Big Labor party. A party of big ideas. A party which is deeply connected to the community. A party which reflects our diverse nation.

. . . unless there comes to the Nation a greater emancipation than Lincoln's Proclamation effected, it is doomed, it is bound to go down.

Learn to nurture and trust your instincts as well as your conscious reasoning. Often, one's instincts will offer the better judgment.

A poet is a good citizen turned inside out.

If it's nice out, I swim pretty much every day for about half an hour. I have a great pool; it's very private and not too many people use it.