“The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.”

I have scars on my hands from touching certain people…Certain heads, certain colours and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me.

If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late? Nobody.

It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.

You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.

I’m up to my ears in unwritten words.

I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do.

I mean they don’t seem able to love us just the way we are. They don’t seem able to love us unless they can keep changing us a little bit. They love their reasons for loving us almost as much as they love us, and most of the time more.

We are, all four of us, blood relatives, and we speak a kind of esoteric, family language, a sort of semantic geometry in which the shortest distance between any two points is a fullish circle.

How long should a man’s legs be? Long enough to touch the ground.

The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.

I’m one of the little foxes that spoil the grapes.

I’m quite illiterate, but I read a lot.

I just hope that one day – preferably when we’re both blind drunk – we can talk about it.

Always, always, always referring every goddam thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos.

An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.

Sentimentality is loving something more than God does.

I’d rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.

A mother who is not everything for her children: a friend, a teacher, a confidant, a source of joy and founded pride, inducement and soothing, reconciliator, judge and forgiver, that mother obviously chose the wrong job.

A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

Painful as it may be, a significant emotional event can be the catalyst for choosing a direction that serves us – and those around us – more effectively. Look for the learning.

It is better to live rich than to die rich.

All your life, you will be faced with a choice. You can choose love positivity and gratitude that things aren’t worse or hate negativity and bitterness that things aren’t better. I choose love positivity and gratitude that things aren’t worse.

Better hope deferred than none.

The inward pleasure of imparting pleasure – that is the choicest of all.