“Mostly, I think people are fake. Well, what do you expect? The fake world we live in conspires to make us all fakes.”

If you want to be a writer, you don’t want to live in a comfortable place.

The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.

I got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn’t get–and never would get.

We have this huge discourse on family in this country, but no one deconstructs it the same way. People talk about “the American family.” The right wing has this thing – Focus on the Family. What the hell is that?

The heart can get really cold if all you’ve known is winter.

I wondered what that was like, to hold someone’s hand. I bet you could sometimes find all of the mysteries of the universe in someone’s hand.

I bring my best instincts to my work. For instance – and I come by this naturally, or I think I do – I am a very good judge of character.

But love was always something heavy for me. Something I had to carry.

I didn’t think it was my job to accept what everyone said I was and who I should be.

I don’t want to just discuss the issues – I want family to be a real part of the character of the novels I write, and I don’t like to write things that feel like issue books.

I wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful.

You are thirst and thirst is all I know

I wondered about the science of storms and how sometimes it seemed that a storm wanted to break the world and how the world refused to break.

Absent parents aren’t abusive per se. They’re neglectful. They love in a very imperfect way. There are parents like that, and they do love their daughters and sons, but they’re not parents in the way that we might think of it.

Water was something he loved, something he respected. He understood its beauty and its dangers. He talked about swimming as if it were a way of life.

I do that with all of my characters. They have one of the flaws I have, and I zero in on that flaw.

Those who desire to remain intoxicated by Reality do not require artificial intoxicants. Indulging in false things will only increase falsity, for every direction is indeed infinite.

Only a Californian would have observed that it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the real fake from the fake fake.

Renunciation means death of false ego.

A false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.

The difference between true and false repentance lies in this: the man who truly repents cries out against his heart; but the other, as Eve, against the serpent, or something else.

Like the juggler, deceiving by his tricks, one is deluded by egotism, falsehood and illusion.

Admire the diamond that can bear the hits of a hammer. Many deceptive preachers, when critically examined, turn out to be false.

The Lord is in me, the Lord is in you,as life is in every seed, put false pride away and seek the Lord within.