You can spend your life looking over your shoulder or you can look ahead. I choose to look ahead

What you should want from life is an arena big enough to express your talents and gifts.

I broke a lot of rules because I didn't know the rules.

Our vices are the excesses of our virtues.

Calico KittyMy calico kittywas painted and primedshe could prowlthe night away ~without spending a dime...

Younger colleagues tended to draw untested self-confidence from their bonuses and prestigious degrees.

You have to make a choice when you start to sing and decide whether you want to service the music, and be at the top of your art, or if you want to be a very popular tenor.

Oh, you crows! Feast away! What a spread! Soup straight from the eye sockets! And thick red sake! But don't have too much Or you'll surely get drunk.

Fine art, poetry, that kind of thing, elevates a nation.

I tried all kinds of sports when I was a kid, like soccer and tennis and golf, and, in fact, started skating to be able to play hockey.

Music fills the infinite between two souls. This has been muffled by the mist of our daily habits.

Conservation is not just an ideal that we read about; it works.

A writer is not different from a reader, in that the common ragbag of orthodoxies and assumptions is what a poet has to work with as well.

I've learned a great deal about a certain type of filmmaking. But I have ambitions toward another type of filmmaking that I haven't been allowed to engage in yet.