“Under the seams runs the pain.”

Give me a world, you have taken the world I was.

At least half of your mind is always thinking, I’ll be leaving; this won’t last. It’s a good Buddhist attitude. If I were a Buddhist, this would be a great help. As it is, I’m just sad.

Everything depends on liking the people and trusting the people. You have to assume that whatever they do will be as good as you want the thing to be and just go ahead with that.

Do you remember when they taught cursive in schools? I think they don’t anymore. But I still enjoy it – just the physical act and all the – the whole business of making a thing out of language.

Desire doubled is love and love doubled is madness.

We participate in the creation of the world by decreating ourselves.

Meanwhile music pounded / across hearts opening every valve to the desperate drama of being / a self in a song.

No need to fear death. There will be a tunnel and light.

Philosophy – hopeless. Yet it gives me hope.

Myths are stories about people who become too big for their lives temporarily, so that they crash into other lives or brush against gods. In crisis their souls are visible.

I don’t read reviews and I don’t know what to do with opinions, so I just lose them. They take up space, they become a process of manufacturing a persona, which I want to avoid.

Here we go mother on the shipless ocean. Pity us, pity the ocean, here we go.

Up against another human being one’s own procedures take on definition.

A page with a poem on it is less attractive than a page with a poem on it and some tea stains.

Sometimes I dream a sentence and write it down. It’s usually nonsense, but sometimes it seems a key to another world.

Could you visit me in dreams? That would cheer me. Sweet to see friends in the night, however short the time.

And this has sometimes been a lonely road, because I never meet anybody coming the other way.

The words we read and words we write never say exactly what we mean. The people we love are never just as we desire them. The two symbols never perfectly match. Eros is in between.

It is … impossible to keep one’s excellence in a little glass casket, like a jewel, to take it out whenever wanted.

One may keep snug and dry by such knowledge, but one misses a world of loveliness.

Who will look out for you if you do the right thing.

Courage in danger is half the battle.

A wise man who stands firm is a statesman, a foolish man who stands firm is a catastrophe.

It is in the nature of cats to do a certain amount of unescorted roaming.