The usual criticism of a novel about an artist is that, no matter how real he is as a man, he is not real to us as an artist, since we have to take on trust the works of art he produces.

A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.

One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.

The ways we miss our lives are life.

The people who live in a golden age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks.

It is always hard for poets to believe that one says their poems are bad not because one is a fiend but because their poems are bad.

Read at whim! Read at whim!

We can't tell our life from our wish

It is better to entertain an idea than to take home to live with you for the rest of your life.

Pain comes from the darkness. And we call it wisdom. It is pain.

Except from the Americans—but every pearl has its oyster.

I guess for me Hemingway is a lot like it is for others: he goes down well when we are young.

Every player feels like they can play at this level. Not every player gets an opportunity. I was fortunate to get an opportunity. Everything's kind of worked out real well.

The gift of prayer is not always at our command.

Hate is just a form of criticism. You can never truly grow as a person until you’ve taken everything the world can throw at you. Sometimes you just have to let it hit you and move on

What we hoped was that we could stop the coming end of the world.

I believe that in our constant search for security we can never gain any peace of mind until we secure our own soul.

Life itself was hard enough without monosynaptic sociopaths preying on folks.

...a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.

I played a scene at the end of my first year, and that's how I was discovered.

He treats me like the dirt under my feet.