“Always do the things you fear the most. Courage is an acquired taste, like caviar.”

And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.

Often I find that poems predict what I’m going to do later in my own writing, and often I find that poems predict my life. So I think poetry is the most intense expression of feeling that we have.

The truth is simple, you do not die from love. You only wish you did.

My reaction to porno films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first twenty minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live.

I don’t think that sex necessarily produces intimacy.

It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.

And what if I don’t want forgiveness?

The soul is awakened through service.

Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartednes s that requires the true courage — however often we are hurt as a result of it.

My mother wanted me to be her wings, to fly as she never quite had the courage to do. I love her for that. I love the fact that she wanted to give birth to her own wings.

Shakespeare wrote without knowing he would become Shakespeare

There is no loneliness like the loneliness of a dead marriage.

You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.

Solitude is un-American.

My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.” – Socrates (470-399 B.C.) “Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t

The sexuality doesn’t end. It really doesn’t. You’re sexual your whole life, if you’re a sexual person.

I would live the same life over if I had to live again, And the chances are I go where most men go.

I liken myself to Henry Ford and the auto industry, I give you 90 percent of what most people need.

Dreamlike sequencing is perhaps one of João Gilberto Noll’s most remarkable triumphs in Quiet Creature on the Corner.

It is the dialogue that matters most, not its imagined end. It is the sacred act of inquiry wherein we gently trace the experienced outlines of an ever-greater whole.

And take on the country’s most legendary eating challenges. I’m no competitive eater, just a regular guy with a serious appetite.

Wanting to be understood, as adults, can be our most violent form of nostalgia.

When you start getting into a full-band, democratic context the little things almost immediately get thrown out the window because you don’t think they’re important.

Families, particularly, tend to be the ones that you take the most for granted. They seem to slip under the radar, all those important things – it almost becomes second nature to do so.