The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of day with some purchased relief.

By puberty I learned that nothing worth having could be easily attained and to succeed one must be single minded.

As long as we prioritize material truths over spiritual truths we will live in tyranny because we are living an illusion

You must not feel persecuted and examined. Liberate yourself from the idea that people are watching you.

I get fixated when I'm bleeding -- I can see why they went in for blood-letting in the medieval times because it makes you feel a bit better. When I cut myself, the drama of it calms me down.

The bad-boy label is just an assumption.

The revolution that's required isn't a revolution of radical ideas, but the implementation of ideas we already have.

I recognize that I have the ability to be selfish, but I also recognize that you can't be happy if you only care about yourself at the expense of other people.

Strength does not have to be belligerent and loud.

If people have some sort of yearning, dissatisfaction or some itching irritability, then it might because they aren't looking in the right direction for a solution. They aren't looking within.

I thought I was promiscuous, but it turns out I was just thorough.

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.

Women, if the soul of the nation is to be saved, I believe that you must become its soul.

We live in a world in which courage is in less supply than genius.

Repeal all laws which assume that mankind is a herd of cattle

I don't like to see animals in pain. That was very uncomfortable to me. I don't like factory farming. I'm not an advocate for the meat industry.

If you believe you will not be free from sin until you die,you have just made death your savior instead of Jesus.

Style: There is something in too much verbal felicity (as in Joyce or Nabokov or Borges) that can betray the writer into technique for the sake of technique.

They flaunt their conjugal felicity in one's face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins.