She was a beautiful woman dragging a crippled foot and I was that foot. I was bricks sewn into the hem of her clothes, I was a steel dress

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.

Wherever it is you make your home, there is always this other place, this other person, calling to you. Come to me. Come back.

Writers are nothing more than borderline schizophrenics who are able to control the voices.

I like chords that are very lush with all the lush parts taken out.

The path of the knowledgeable, successful person, which only leads to supreme good fortune and great success is always directly in front of you.

It is the spirit of a person that hangs above him like a star in the sky.

The Sennett system of making pictures was actually fun. You never knew what the person next to you was going to do.

If one gets his life together, there will be enough love and bounty to take care of every avenue of life.

Get the better of yourself - this is the best kind of victory.

The people who encouraged me weren't necessarily writers or readers themselves. They were people who were just pleased to see me devote my life to reading and writing.

For those whose goal it is to twist wrong into right, a good starting point is to convince young people that the vulgar is beautiful.