Everything breaks down but desire. And because we are old, doctors try to shame that out of us. Young punks! Lose one's youth, and doctors take it as axiomatic that you've lost your mind, your balls.

Does childhood really happen? Do we imagine it? Everyone remembers something else....

She was kahuna, creating more life around her than was actually there, heightening the momentousness of each living thing by simply gazing upon it.

They would no longer be time-bound, that they were free to live in the future, the past, in fantasy. She had been a woman preparing to live, not living.

You think knowing things will solve your private little griefs?

We love that which we corrupt.

When you hate something for twenty years, you get to know it well.

Got something to do with guilt, ' Toro said. 'Her mother, neh?' 'Guilt. Longing. Got something to do with all of us.

Beware of logic.

So much easier to give. I detest asking.

Common sense. Mothers are the last riddle, the worst horror, the only consolation.

Are you sure you have enough sweetener in that? I could offer to conscript the rest of the cubes from the galley for you.

The obscure, unexplainable aspect of the writing process is about how some rhymes appear in your head. It often feels more like tuning in to some kind of channel than composing words in your mind.

I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to come and witness my hanging.

I hate to see a woman cry, unless of course I'm crying first in which case I feel it's appropriate.

It is curious how people take it for granted that they have a right to preach at you and pray over you as soon as your income falls below a certain level.

I'm European. I don't like wearing tops. And I don't like tan lines.

When you hear designers complaining about the challenge of their profession, you have to say: don't get carried away-it's only dresses.

The common thread in all of my climbing is it was something new, something never done before. That commonality is more important than the discipline.

Sometimes you want to run away Sometimes you think you do But you never had a dream like this before And you don't want to ask for more Sometimes you leave a mark Before you know the score

Dialect words are those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel.