Never let a man stay the night. Dawn has a way of casting a pall on any night magic.

She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.

The phoenix must burn to emerge.

Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.

You were my home, Mother. I had no home but you

Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.

I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots--prostitute, housewife, saint--like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.

I couldn't imagine owning beauty like my mothers. I wouldn't dare.

Oleander time, she said. Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind.

Her hatred glittered irresistibly. I could see it, the jewel, it was sapphire, it was the cold lakes of Norway.

Don't turn over the rocks if you don't want to see the pale creatures who live under them.

The most important tool you have on a resume is language.

What's a punk band? Hey, who's got a beer?

Short stories do not say this happened and this happened and this happened. They are a microcosm and a magnification rather than a linear progression.

That's where Dr. [Martin Luther] King is mixed up. His goals should be the solution of the problem of the black man in America.

When I have worries, fears or a love affair, I have the luck of being able to transform it into a poem.

Your plans are fine, as long as you realize God has the right to change them.

It's just difficult to release music constantly while also constantly being on the road.

The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.

Misery colored by the greens and blues in my mother's voice took away all the grief out of the words and left me with a conviction that pain was not only endurable, it was sweet.

Happiness is not the acquisition of anything; it's the understanding of something.