Scarlett (O'Hara) taught that one could be hungry and despairing, but not broken and not without resources, spiritual in nature, that precluded one from surrendering without a fight

Violence send deep roots into the heart, it has no seasons, it is always ripe, evergreen.

And I was glad she had the camera as a fence to protect herself, an excuse to be invisible. Cameras are a lifesaver for the very shy people who have nowhere else to hide.

Words are pretty, but anyone can talk. Pay attention to the people who perform.

The body's a funny thing. It's so full of surprises that it makes conventional wisdom seem silly.

The tide was a poem that only time could create, and I watched it stream and brim and makes its steady dash homeward, to the ocean.

The mind is an intricate mechanism that can be run on the fuels of both victory and defeatism.

Take the local, take the express, don't get off till you reach success -- Sidney Rosen (Prince Of Tides)

The whole construct of my universe was a cunning, entangled network of lies. I had to start over again. I knew that. And I had to begin by ceasing to loathe myself for my difference from the rest.

Hurt is a great teacher, maybe the greatest of all.

The water was pure and cold and came out of the Apennines tasting like snow melted in the hands of a pretty girl.

I lit a cigarette and began puffing on it as I drank one quick beer after another. I was neither a drinker nor a smoker nor a fighter, but I had planned to be all three on this day.

I became one of those anonymous Americans who tries to keep his mind sharp and inquisitive while performing all the humiliating rituals of the middle class

A man's only got so many yeses inside him before he uses them all up.

I've always admired people who give accurate directions, and the tribe is small.

In our modern age, there are writers who have heaped scorn on the very idea of the primacy of story. I'd rather warm my hands on a sunlit ice floe than try to coax fire from the books they carve from glaciers.

I was born in the age of "alas".

...Father made a fetish out of performing tasks the correct way. There was an efficiency and economy of his motions that I always found a pleasure to watch and a pain to mimic.

No one expected me. Everything awaited me.

Where does it all lead? What will become of us? These were our young questions, and young answers were revealed. It leads to each other. We become ourselves.

I don't fuck much with the past but I fuck plenty with the future.

Freedom is...the right to write the wrong words.

I learned from him that often contradiction is the clearest way to truth

I imagined myself as Frida to Diego, both muse and maker. I dreamed of meeting an artist to love and support and work with side by side.

What will happen to us?" I asked. "There will always be us," he answered.

Everything distracted me, but most of all myself.

I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand, that Joplin had the last drunken throat, that Morrison had the last enlightened mind.

Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine.

I have loved books all my life. There is nothing more beautiful in our material world than the book.

I don't think," he insisted. "I feel.

Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself?

So my last image was as the first. A sleeping youth cloaked in light, who opened his eyes with a smile of recognition for someone who had never been a stranger.

Make your interactions with people transformational, not just transactional.

We went our separate ways, but within walking distance of one another.

I immersed myself in books and rock 'n' roll, the adolescent salvation ...

I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one.

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth. For nothing is more precious than the life force and may the love of that force guide you as you go.

I thought to myself that he contained a whole universe that I had yet to know.

We wanted, it seemed, what we already had, a lover and a friend to create with, side by side. To be loyal, yet be free.

Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.

Both of them were ahead of their time, but they didn't live long enough to see the time they were ahead of.

I understood that in this small space of time we had mutually surrendered our loneliness and replaced it with trust.

Later he would say that the Church led him to God, and LSD led him to universe. He also said that art led him to the devil, and sex kept him with the devil.

Finally, by the sea, where God is everywhere, I gradually calmed.

We were as Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world.

Writing is not some quiet, closet act.

Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.

I wish I could just project everything on the paper,

What is the soul? What color is it? I suspected my soul, being mischievous, might slip away while I was dreaming and fail to return. I did my best not to fall asleep, to keep it inside of me where it belonged.

To be an artist is to enter into competition with god.