“Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe.”

Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country.

Civilized Man says: I am Self, I am Master, all the rest is other–outside, below, underneath, subservient. I own, I use, I explore, I exploit, I control. What I do is what matters. What I want is what matter is for. I am that I am, and the rest is women & wilderness, to be used as I see fit.

We read books to find out who we are.

All knowledge is local, all truth is partial. No truth can make another truth untrue. All knowledge is part of the whole knowledge.

Listen.’ For being saved is not the point. Music saves nothing. Merciful, uncaring, it denies and breaks down all the shelters, the houses men build for themselves, that they may see the sky.

Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.

What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat… where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches.

It’s a rare gift, to know where you need to be, before you’ve been to all the places you don’t need to be.

Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight.

If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell you it again when you’re fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you’re reading a whole new book.

Men call women faithless, changeable, and though they say it in jealousy of their own ever-threatened sexual honor, there is some truth in it.

When the genuine myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life.

I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning.

I never knew anybody . . . who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details.

Hope is a slow business.

Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.

My songs are the reflection of how I think and how I feel in that moment. But I’m conscious of the fact that artists have a responsibility before the masses and they have to take care with their words.

Those are the moments that I think are precious to a dog-when, with his adoring soul coming through his eyes, he feels that you are really thinking of him.

The trick is not how much pain you feel – but how much joy you feel

I don’t want to look sloppy, because then I feel sloppy

I will never forget that day. I just wanted to see Kurt Cobain’s face. I had a feeling he was very cute. But, I couldn’t see his face.

The trick is not how much pain you feel–but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain.

We are not people who touch each other carelessly; every point of contact between us feels important, a rush of energy and relief.

Sometimes crying or laughing are the only options left, and laughing feels better right now.