“It is only in his work that an artist can find reality and satisfaction, for the actual world is less intense than the world of his invention and consequently his life, without recourse to violent disorder, does not seem very substantial.”

Blanche: No, I have the misfortune of being an English instructor. I attempt to instill a bunch of bobby-soxers and drugstore Romeos with a reverence for Hawthorne and Whitman and Poe!

There is no pleasure in the world like writing well and going fast.

The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.

For time is the longest distance between two places.

We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.

To change is to live, to live is to change, and not to change is to die.

I have always been more interested in creating a character that contains something crippled. I think nearly all of us have some kind of defect.

A bedroom is just as nice as whoever sleeps in it with you.

We lose the magic whenever we stop telling our story and begin to wonder how we’re doing, if we’re selling it, if the listener likes us.

Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you’ll know you’re dead.

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

The object of art is to make eternal the desperately fleeting moment.

If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.

But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.

An artist must believe in himself – Possibly not so passionately as Lawrence – but passionately.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

I know Christ. And that is secure. And I think that is something that actually helps believers pursue his holiness.

Actually I like working kind of fast, because if you got it, why bother doing it over and over?

I’ve actually found – especially doing my cabaret show – I’m connecting with people in a way I haven’t connected with them. I’ve found that when you’re open and honest, people respond to that, whatever you’re being open and honest about.

It’s actually quite a good ethos for life: go into the unknown with truth, commitment, and openness and mostly you’ll be okay.

I look at the newspapers, and I cannot believe most of the stories I read. Bernie Madoff, who actually screwed millions of people for billions of dollars.

[You have to be] willing to be changed by the person you’re listening to, where you’re not just waiting for a pause so you can say your thing, but you’re actually letting them have an effect on you if they can.

Migrants come up and no longer seek to evade the Border Patrol, but are actually left at the border by their smugglers.

That somehow distances us from actually taking part fully with the reality we do have, and that creates suffering.