The family story tells, and it was told true, of my great-grandfather who begat eight genius children and bought twelve almost new grand pianos. He left a considerable estate when he died.

Emerald as heavy as a golf course, ruby as dark as an afterbirth, diamond as white as sun on the sea.

Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.

I am a collection of dismantled almosts.

Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.

As it has been said: Love and a cough cannot be concealed. Even a small cough. Even a small love.

I’m lost. And it’s my own fault. It’s about time I figured out that I can’t ask people to keep me found.

Watch out for intellect, because it knows so much it knows nothing and leaves you hanging upside down, mouthing knowledge as your heart falls out of your mouth.

Meanwhile in my head, I’m undergoing open-heart surgery.

O starry night, This is how I want to die

O yellow eye, let me be sick with your heat, let me be feverish and frowning.

Be grateful for the day and the day will be grateful for you. Stay positive and everything around you will respond in kind.

No man owns me. All man can do is practice the timeless, criminal art of threatening to separate my soul from her physical host.

True ability is undisturbed by pretentious criticism.

It kills me when people talk about California hedonism. Anybody who talks about California hedonism has never spent a Christmas in Sacramento.

Art: If the object of poetry is, to make men, then poetry is the heir of prophecy.

The word 'religion' takes on a sinister cast when one examines its root, religare, meaning 'to bind,' which in turn means 'to hold, to make prisoner, to restrain.

America is the only place where people go hunting on a full stomach.

We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey. She who loves roses must be patient and not cry out when she is pierced by thorns.

I don't want to take fame for granted because that is when you start to think you are better than everyone else. That is when you start thinking that you are someone that you are not.

A fish probably has no means of apprehending the existence of water; it is too deeply immersed in it.