They're not parallel at all. They're my concerns, but how they're expressed particularly on the page is completely divorced from who I am in my street life.

For sometimes you can't help but crave some ruin in what you love.

It is 'where we are' that should make all the difference, whether we believe we belong there or not.

The truth, finally, is who can tell it.

As for what's the most challenging aspect of teaching, it's convincing younger writers of the importance of reading widely and passionately.

So my first book I had no experience having written a book, but each book is a little snapshot of who you are at that moment, accrued all through time, so I accept that.

In this difficult era the most valuable commodity is the unfailing turn of the hours and how they retrieve for us the known harbor of yesterday.

Don’t sanctuaries become prisons, and vice versa, foremost in the mind?

Imagination might not be limitless. It's still tethered to the universe of what we know.

For at some point, each of us will be asked to embody what we feel and know.

Most people dont think about race as much as I do. They dont have to.

Stop selling your life for peanuts.

When silence is a choice, it is an unnerving presence. When silence is imposed, it is censorship.

...true authority is not based on control - it's based on truth...

it is good to be sitting some place in public at 2:30 in the afternoon without getting the flesh ripped from your bones.

Maybe it's due to my west coast liberal upbringing, but, the idea of parallel universes doesn't strike me as being too far out there.

Ultimately, you must forget about technique. The further you progress, the fewer teachings there are. The Great Path is really NO PATH.

Aint nothin you can tell her Yeah she get the mozarella

I've decided that perhaps I'm bulimic and just keep forgetting to purge.

Writing is seduction.

A good speech should be like a woman's skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest