...If I ever got sloppy and maudlin, it would be for the streets of my childhood—but no self- respecting writer should ever eulogize a slum...

...some nights I'd sneak out and listen to the radio in my Dad's old Chevy - children need solitude - they don't teach that in school...

...the wet brush of snowflakes was like your kisses everywhere ...

...no good writing flows from a polluted well - you can write about monsters, but you can't be one...

...I don't just wish you rain, Beloved - I wish you the beauty of storms...

...true love is an irrevocable act - you can only give your heart away once - after that, you give as much as you have left ...

...wherever there is society, there is authority and the temptation to disobedience because our individual wills refuse to submit...

...you think so logically...like a hawk soaring - I feel so chaotically...like a kite without a tail plummeting to earth...

...you fantasize about me reading my poems to you - it doesn't work that way - I write down everything later - living is not an after-thought...

...if you always move in certainty, your writing will be flat - creativity is a rugged terrain...

...is worship too strong a word? yes, I worship you - to worship is to give worth to something – isn’t that what love is all about?...

After all, what else is scientific enquiry of any sort other than a controlled version of banging one's head against the universe until something gives?

One thing I can say about the Motown acts is that we were a family. That's not a myth.

You don't need to know who I'm dating. You don't need to know what I'm doing. I'm fine with everybody not knowing that.

How can I be kind? How can I find bird-relief in the nest-building of day-to-day? Necessity supplies no velvet wing with which to escape. I am indeed and mortally pierced with the seeds of love.

If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been due more to patient attention, than to any other talent

The minute you realize that your options are unlimited, things just start falling into place all around you.

I do not believe there is any royal road to success as an athlete any more than there is to others in everyday life.

That decision to commit your life to certain principles and a certain narrative, if I wrote a paper on that, I know I'd find inconsistencies.

One doesn't generally look into mirrors when one is especially angry; one has better things to do, like pace the floor or throw things.

Thou hast the most unsavoury similes.