“My belief is that “recluse” is a code word generated by journalists; meaning, “doesn’t like to talk to reporters.””

I was dreaming about my grandfather. A very old man, at least as old as I am now, 91. I thought, when I was a boy, that he had been 91 all his life. Now I feel as if I have been 91 all my life.

It is simply wrong to begin with a theme, symbol or other abstract unifying agent, and then try to force characters and events to conform to it.

Can’t say it often enough — change your hair, change your life.

Everybody gets told to write about what they know. The trouble with many of us is that at the earlier stages of life we think we know everything- or to put it more usefully, we are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance.

Life’s single lesson: that there is more accident to it than a man can ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane.

Some of us are afraid of dying; others of human loneliness. Profane was afraid of land or seascapes like this, where nothing else lived but himself.

Love with your mouth shut, help without breaking your ass or publicizing it: keep cool, but care.

Information. What’s wrong with dope and women? Is it any wonder the world’s gone insane, with information come to be the only real medium of exchange?

To have humanism we must first be convinced of our humanity. As we move further into decadence this becomes more difficult.

Someday she might replace whatever of her had gone away by some prosthetic device, a dress of a certain color, a phrase in a letter, another lover.

All investigations of Time, however sophisticated or abstract, have at their true base the human fear of mortality.

Every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength.

For every kind of vampire, there is a kind of cross.

What goes around may come around, but it never ends up exactly the same place, you ever notice? Like a record on a turntable, all it takes is one groove’s difference and the universe can be on into a whole ‘nother song.

If the world offered nothing, nowhere to support or make bearable whatever her private grief was, then it is that world, and not she, that is at fault.

Through the machineries of greed, pettiness, and the abuse of power, love occurs.

The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not.

The first part of planning is to believe that you can put that plan into practice.

I believe in living, I believe in birth, I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth and I believe that a lost ship, steered by tired, sea sick sailors, can still be guided home to port.

If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.

There’s great power in believing what you can envision in your mind. 

In control of my destiny never in doubt.

I know that we sin but I do believe we try, we all try.

Forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?