I was here for a reason. There was something I was meant not simply to be, but to do- and it wasn't to run or hide or give up the minute things seemed terrifying and impossible.

I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.

Sometimes it's better not to look back.

If I'd kept my heart better armored, where would I be now?

Sometimes you just need to go through a door.

I liked this idea: that peculiarness wasn't a deficiency, but an abundance; that it wasn't we who lacked something normals had, but they who lacked peculiarness. That we were more, not less.

Strange, I thought, how you can be living your dreams and your nightmares at the very same time.

If you must fail ... fail spectacularly!

We cling to our fairy tales until the price for believing in them becomes too high.

There was a girl who could fly, a boy who had bees living inside him, a brother and sister who could lift boulders over their heads.

What I believe when it comes to big things in life, there are no accidents. Everything happens for a reason. You are here for a reason - and it's not to fail and die.

Few men are a threat to a fully-trained w

When I first started, my songs were the politics of anger. As I got older and hopefully wiser, I wanted to be part of the politics of answers.

Being deeply aware of fragility and ecstasy seems to me an essential part of being alive and living fully - and there's no way for me to separate this from my poems.

I love Latino culture but I hate the concept of "la raza." It is a divisive mindset.

I don't want the natural athlete -- I want a guy who'll go after the hard ones.

Creativity is the art that can give rise to visionary metaphorical relationships, as opposed to purely psy-chological ones.

You are not your past, not your habits, not your compulsions. When you get to know who you are, anything becomes possible.

I can feel it... the chance to start over, to live right, to love right, to burn up in a fiery cloud and never again be buried in the mud.

To me the key thing is getting it right. And if a person's really smart and they're doing fantastic work I don't care if they're a high school kid or a Harvard professor, it's the work that matters.

Life is tragic comedy, in a way. There is humor.