These people picked you up and played with you and then left you lying in the rain

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.

I don't want to be like my mentor or inspiration, I can do better. Don't get me wrong, I need them to motivate and inspire me but my potential can never be like theirs.

An idea is salvation by imagination.

She was supposed to be putting her life together right now, and all she could seem to do was throw grenades at it.

There are more hooligans in the House of Commons than at a football match.

If thou suffer injustice, console thyself; the true unhappiness is in doing it.

But the people I admire have always been people like Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson and Jack Lemmon.

You must learn to question everything. To wait before moving, to look before stepping, and to observe everything

I started resenting how much art robs from life. I'd go to a party and I couldn't enjoy myself, even sexually. All I could think was how I was going to reinvent the experience into a piece of art.

Give us courage and gaiety and the quient mind . . .

For thugs from the ghetto, violence is a way of life - it's what helps you survive.