No one behind, no one ahead. The path the ancients cleared has closed. And the other path, everyone's path, easy and wide, goes nowhere. I am alone and find my way.

The Mexican...is familiar with death. [He] jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it. It is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love.

Beyond myself, somewhere, I wait for my arrival.

Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.

To love is to battle, to open doors, to cease to be a ghost with a number forever in chains, forever condemned by a faceless master; the world changes if two look at each other and see.

Deserve your dream.

A flower without a stem, is beauty waiting to die. A heart without love, is a tear waiting to cry.

Love is not a desire for beauty; it is a yearning for completion.

A civilization that denies death ends by denying life.

Every moment is nothing without end.

Whatever is not stone is light

I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry.

Seventy per cent humidity is ideal for vocal cords.

I can't claim to be disenchanted "with the current state of fiction" because I read so little of it. My reading is mostly drawn to history.

The heart ran o'er With silent worship of the great of old!-- The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule Our spirits from their urns.

I was also interested in chemistry, but my parents were not willing to buy me a chemistry set.

Every artist undresses his subject, whether human or still life. It is his business to find essences in surfaces, and what more attractive and challenging surface than the skin around a soul?

I not only loved studying theater, I loved being a theater major. It gave me an excuse to brood, to grow a beard, to wear black 'at' people. I didn't just want to play Hamlet, I wanted to be Hamlet.

A book is judged, not by its reference to life, but by its reference to other books.

I'm drawn to more than I'm allowed to do or asked to do, or probably should do. My whole career has been comedy, of a kind. I guess I've always existed in that world.

Prayer is an expression of who we are...We are a living incompleteness. We are a gap, an emptiness that calls for fulfillment.