I never think over my mistakes. I just live up to them.

until you learn that an artist cannot afford to scorn any phase of life that is human, you will never do great work.

creation, like vengeance, is God's. It is dangerous when man tampers with it.

The surest way of being considered eccentric is just to be yourself. So few of us have the nerve.

There's nothing so unreliable as figures, and everybody but a mathematician knows that. Figures lie right to your face.

The companionship of a secret is often corruptive to good habits, such as sleep and appetite.

Youth makes no compromise with life. It demands all, passionately; loses all, or wins, with anguish of spirit.

It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide house.

Oh, no, it can't be teardrops 'Cause a man ain't supposed to cry.

I know why the Jews and Muslims have nine hundred names for God; one small word is not enough for love.

I wish I was a teenager in the 1970s.

Do not try to produce an ideal child, it would find no fitness in this world.

Poetry is perfect verbs hunting for elusive nouns.

Everybody was tellin' me that I had to do something different, and I kind of agreed that I did need to vary it a little bit. I still love some rock 'n' roll too.

Tell what is yours to tell. Let others tell what is theirs.

I believe that a writer has to tell what they think is the truth in a human experience. The truth of the human experience cannot escape the political.