“I am not my own friend.Time cuts me in two.”

From life, from the apple cut by the flaming knife, what grain will be saved? My son, believe me, nothing remains, Only adult toil, the furrow of fate in the palm. Only toil, Nothing more.

When I die, I will see the lining of the world. The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.

Consciousness even in my sleep changes primary colors. The features of my face melt like a wax doll in the fire. And who can consent to see in the mirror the mere face of man?

On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.

He returns years later, has no demands. He wants only one, most precious thing: To see, purely and simply, without name, Without expectations, fears, or hopes, At the edge where there is no I or not-I.

Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.

When I curse Fate, it’s not me, but the earth in me.

I think that I am here, on this earth, to present a report on it, but to whom I don’t know. As if I were sent so that whatever takes place has meaning because it changes into memory.

The soul exceeds its circumstances.

Love means to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy, Repeats while he binds his tomatoes: No other end of the world will there be, No other end of the world will there be.

Irony is the glory of slaves.

The partition separating life from death is so tenuous. The unbelievable fragility of our organism suggests a vision on a screen: a kind of mist condenses itself into a human shape, lasts a moment and scatters.

The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.

Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.

It’s true that what is morbid is highly valued today, and so you may think that I am only joking or that I’ve devised just one more means of praising Art with the help of irony.

The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are drifting side by side to our common doom.

People have labeled me homophobic. If I was homophobic, I wouldn’t have friends who are gay and lesbian, so that can’t be true.

I’m sure I’ve all but lost friends by maintaining that, despite their love for it, I always saw Stanley Kramer’s ‘It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World’ as more of an exercise in anti-comedy than humor.

I am a friend of the working man, and I would rather be his friend, than be one.

I am mad, I am going under, I must follow the advice of a friend, and pay no heed to myself.

Understanding is the soil in which grow all the fruits of friendship.

He was my best friend. I would always love him, and it would never, ever be enough.

I wrote ‘Oath’ for Cher Lloyd because there were really no best-friend anthems out there. Not only did she love it, she wanted me to rap on it, too!