“Love is a fog that burns with the first daylight of reality.”

I want so much that is not here and do not know where to go.

Success is always dangerous. It can make an asshole out of anybody.

The crazy ones only laugh when there is no reason to laugh.

It wasn’t my day. My week. My month. My year. My life. God damn it.

Before my death I hope to obtain my life

Baby,” I said, “I’m a genius but nobody knows it but me.

Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.

The less I needed, the better I felt.

It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the real meaning of the sun.

I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.

The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.

Great art is horseshit, buy tacos.

Simplicity is always the secret, to a profound truth, to doing things, to writing, to painting. Life is profound in its simplicity

The tired sunsets and the tired people – it takes a lifetime to die and no time at all.

Any asshole can chase a skirt, art takes discipline.

We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system.

In England, it’s now Sir Ben. Mister has just disappeared. It’s not even on my passport anymore. They’ve taken Mister away from me.

Composing is like driving down a foggy road toward a house. Slowly you see more details of the house-the color of the slates and bricks, the shape of the windows. The notes are the bricks and the mortar of the house.

It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by holding up a bank clerk.

Politicians are like ships: noisiest when lost in a fog.

Sleepwalking down the hall like a firefly in the fog.

Composing is like driving down a foggy road.

The scare quotes burn off like fog.

Maggie Nelson cuts through our culture’s prefabricated structures of thought and feeling with an intelligence whose ferocity is ultimately in the service of love. No piety is safe, no orthodoxy, no easy irony. The scare quotes burn off like fog.