That's why I'm not to be trusted. Because a wound to the heart is also a wound to the mind

We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.

Of two sisters one is always the watcher, one the dancer.

The advantage of poetry over life is that poetry, if it is sharp enough, may last.

The master said you must write what you see / But what I see does not move me / The master answered Change what you see.

Intense love always leads to mourning.

I pretended indifference…even in the presence of love, in the presence of hunger. And the more deeply I felt, the less able I was to respond.

From the beginning of time, in childhood, I thought that pain meant I was not loved. It meant I loved.

The soul is silent. If it speaks at all it speaks in dreams.

The unsaid, for me, exerts great power.

At first I saw you everywhere. Now only in certain things, at longer intervals.

It is very strange that the years teach us patience - that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting.

There is no one, after God, who loves us as much as this most loving Mother does.

It's not the cards that you have all the time that makes you a winner or a loser.

So, once I've written a song, you know, I'm pretty happy with what the song is on its own terms.

Like the Roman, I seem to see the river Tiber foaming with much blood.

Some of my best thinking is done by others.

HI. I’m from Arkansas, the cantaloupe state. And tonight, I hope you will hold my melons close to your heart and vote me your Miss Teen Dream.

When I was growing up and wanted to be a musician, the fantasy that I had of what the music industry was is so wrong.

It is the public scandal that offends; to sin in secret is no sin at all.

The older you get, the more you realise how happenstance... has helped to determine your path through life.