The story of her life. God gave you everything just to take it away. Just so you knew exactly what you were missing.

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.

Graceful living

I remember sitting down with the Rockets and saying, 'Yeah. I'm going to retire.' They said, 'Well, we'll give you $9 million.' And I said, 'You got a pen on you?'

Without the edge, [life's] boring...If you're doing something that's definitely achievable with 100% odds of success, where's the draw in that?

I don't think I could write a straight drama.

We find ourselves less witty in remembering what we have said than in dreaming of what we would have said.

It was a terrible decision, and I confess I'd make it again.

I don't mind dying if I have to, but I'm damned if I want to pay for the guarantee. I'm sorry.

Longevity is having a chronic disease - and taking care of it.