There's literary creation and literary business. When I first got something accepted, it gave my life a validation it didn't otherwise have.

there isn't enough of anything as long as we live. But at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance prevails.

Life and death matters, yes. And the question of how to behave in this world, how to go in the face of everything. Time is short and the water is rising.

That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.

Write about what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets?

And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.

I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.

It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.

The places where water comes together with other water. Those places stand out in my mind like holy places.

Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from.

But I can hardly sit still. I keep fidgeting, crossing one leg and then the other. I feel like I could throw off sparks, or break a window--maybe rearrange all the furniture.

In spiritual moments we nearly perceive a grand, divine conspiracy of interconnectedness between us and everything.

Whatever time is giving us, it will take everything back!

I want you too, so much, ” she whispered. He murmured in her ear, “Then take me.

To mankind in general Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the supreme type of all that a host and hostess should not be.

The loser is usually the one who is ready to lose. Fight, overcome difficulties, control your emotions – and you will win.

He who is still laughing is he who hasn't heard the terrible news.

When you're looking through a magazine, what makes you stop and think is when you see an image and imagine the narrative that is going on inside of it. Those are the ones I make into paintings.

Prison life, fortunately, I spent a lot of years, about 18 years with other prisoners, and, as I say, they enriched your soul.

Some things just won’t go away, no matter how hard you scrub.

Find someone who is having a hard time or is ill or lonely, and do something for him or her.