“And it was about then, about that time, that I began to find life unsatisfactory as an explanation of itself and was forced to adopt the method of the artist of not explaining but putting the blocks together in some other way that seems more significant to him. Which is a rather fancy way of saying I started writing.”

Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician.

It’s hard enough for me to write what I want to write without me trying to write what you say they want me to write which I don’t want to write.

The world is a funny paper read backwards. And that way it isn’t so funny.

Friends are God’s way of apologizing to us for our families

All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent.

Don’t you think there is always something unspoken between two people?

Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?

And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.

Men don’t want anything they get too easy. But on the other hand, men lose interest quickly.

To be free is to have achieved your life.

A blindness to what is going on in each other’s hearts.

The woman spread her legs, and made me look between them. All I could see was something that looked like a dyin’ orchid; consequently, I have never been comfortable around women or orchids.

The name of a person you love is more than language.

All good art is an indiscretion.

Deliberate cruelty is not forgiveable. It is the most unforgiveable thing in my opinion, and the one thing in which I have never, ever been guilty.

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

I began as a dramatist in the theater, so I’m always thinking about how a story moves, what it looks like, how to engage the senses.

This poem began as an emulation of Siqueiros’s compositional style and, in the process, became an ekphrastic aubade about my old neighborhood.

When I realized they had me pegged as a foreign nobleman type I began to live the part, too.

Let’s not forget: This all began when you had eight- and nine-year-old children writing graffiti on walls.

Iran began a policy of expanding its revolution, of interfering with the affairs of its neighbors

Hardly socialism. In fact, it was a Republican plan to begin with.

While I was in school, I began working in the New Business department of an advertising firm, and very quickly I was responsible for roughly 70% of their business

Is everybody in?… Is everybody in?… Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin…