The painter saw what was, an alternate Candor and secrecy inside the skin.

I was much influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre.

A literary influence is never just a literary influence. It's also an influence in the way you see everything - in the way you feel your life.

I was at a benefit for some imprisoned students in the '60s at San Francisco State, and there were lots of poets reading for the benefit: one was Elizabeth Bishop.

I was reading the poems of Rochester. Rochester made himself out to be bisexual, but I think that was only to shock. Most of his poetry is sexual, even pornographic.

I don't know how to sit outside myself and test against a hypothetical self who stayed home.

Deep feeling doesn't make for good poetry. A way with language would be a bit of help.

As humans we look at things and think about what we've looked at. We treasure it in a kind of private art gallery.

I try not to observe myself in the process of composing a poem because I don't want to come up with a formula, which I would then be unscrupulous in using.

I deliberately decided to write a kind of guide to leather bars for straight people, for people not into leather, so that people could see what it was all about.

My thoughts are crowded with death and it draws so oddly on the sexual that I am confused to be attracted by, in effect, my own annihilation.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

Parents shouldn't leave their kids unless —unless they've got to.

There are many people who say there's a God somewhere up there but, God is nothing more than a formula. Just a part of some law of physics that we have yet to understand.

John Legend is a cool guy. He likes to chill, is easy to talk to and hang out with. He's also inspiring on a musical level.

Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much.

Imagine what your life will look like when you have broken the bondage of fear.

I'd like to do a play, but I can't find the right thing. I don't want it to be a starring role. I just want to play a really interesting character.

Virtue is a beautiful thing in woman when they don't go about with it like a child with a drum making all sorts of noise with it.

When you don't know what to do with yourself, do something for someone else.

I can't go white, Indian, Asian, Latin. For me, in my existence, if I'm anything, I'm inclusive of everyone, and we are just one, and I hope that global harmony is in all of us.