If sinners where so unhappy, why would they prefer their suffering? But now I knew why. Without my wounds, who was I?

She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.

The phoenix must burn to emerge.

I know it feels like you have all these options and when you make a decision, you lose a world of possibilities. But the reality is, until you make a decision, you have nothing at all.

Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In life, knowledge of poisons is essential. I've told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to.

Their love as a dragonfly, skimming over echo park, stoppin to visit the lotus. Eating dreams and drinking blue sky.

How right that the body changed over time, becoming a gallery of scars, a canvas of experience, a testament to life and one's capacity to endure it.

It's such a liability to love another person.

Find someone who will tremble for your touch, someone whose fingers are a poem.

Memory is the fourth dimension to any landscape.

Beauty was empty as a gourd, vain as a parakeet. But it had power. It smelled of musk and oranges and made you close your eyes in a prayer.

The advice he reads in Ann Landers – good advice as long as you don’t need it, perfectly sensible as long as you don’t have any use for it.

It is terribly hard to be married, harder than anything. I think one has to be an angel.

Tomorrow is more sure than just about anything else in the entire world.

Dividing the swing into its parts is like dissecting a cat. You'll have blood and guts and bones all over the place. But you won't have a cat.

To seek these things is lost labour; Geese in an oyle pot, fat Hogs among Jews, and Wine in a fishing net.

I don't hate people - not remotely other than they make you crazy in traffic, but as I get older I kind of see more and more why people do what they do.

Confront your inadequacies and push your personal boundaries: It's the surest way to grow, improve and expand the scope of your influence.

Aim for the stars and maybe you'll reach the sky.

A kingdom is not lost by a single defeat.

Reflect, ere you spurn me, that youth at his sides Wears wings; and once gone, all pursuit he derides.