the fragrance of pine resin is frankincense poured out—a balm of stars and snow and moonlit nights

...some nights I'd sneak out and listen to the radio in my Dad's old Chevy - children need solitude - they don't teach that in school...

...the wet brush of snowflakes was like your kisses everywhere ...

...no good writing flows from a polluted well - you can write about monsters, but you can't be one...

...I don't just wish you rain, Beloved - I wish you the beauty of storms...

...true love is an irrevocable act - you can only give your heart away once - after that, you give as much as you have left ...

...I retreat into my fictional world where everything makes sense - but even there I can't even control what people do...

...wherever there is society, there is authority and the temptation to disobedience because our individual wills refuse to submit...

...you think so logically...like a hawk soaring - I feel so chaotically...like a kite without a tail plummeting to earth...

...you fantasize about me reading my poems to you - it doesn't work that way - I write down everything later - living is not an after-thought...

... here's what I believe - sometimes God has a Plan B...

Your goals should not be based on what you can do or what is possible but on what you want.

They’d scared me and had me thinking about what it meant to be really strong, on my own terms—not just fit and brown from the sun, not just flexible and accommodating.

We have always felt the sympathy of the world, but we would prefer the respect of the world to sympathy without respect.

The complexities of cause and effect defy analysis.

The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.

What would people think of a tradesman, that was to give a ball in his shop, hire performers, and hand refreshments about, with a view to benefit his business?

There's a lot of things you can put up with, as long as you're not related to them.

The universe is not rich enough to buy the vote of an honest man.

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. That remark in itself wouldn't make any sense if quoted as it stands.

Change your mind and it will change your life. If nothing around you changes, changes the things that are around you.