Paradise will be a kind of library

So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.

Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.

I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.

I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.

The worst labyrinth is not that intricate form that can entrap us forever, but a single and precise straight line

The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library . . . Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book.

Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.

I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

The original is unfaithful to the translation.

Freedom keeps us soaring, but quarreling destroys our ability to fly.

Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything you want also wants you. But you have to take action to get it.

The experiences associated with death were seen as visits to important dimensions of reality that deserved to be experienced, studied, and carefully mapped.

I think the great country songs mixed with some of that bluegrass instrumentation - and surrounding all that with a little bit of a rock vibe and energy - is the kind of music I make.

A great deal of living must go to a very little writing.

I love to write. It's my first love.

Do not seek dishonest gains: dishonest gains are losses.

Mount Calvary is the academy of love.

I've spent the past month in Washington D.C. and it is terrific to be back in America.

The more a man knows, the less he talks.