The bad poet is a toady mimicking nature.

Herman Melville was as separated from a civilized literature as the lost Atlantis was said to have been from the great peoples of the earth.

We cannot live, suffer or die for somebody else, for suffering is too precious to be shared.

When one realizes that his life is worthless he either commits suicide or travels.

Nothing in our times has become so unattractive as virtue.

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

It takes a long time to understand nothing.

Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors.

It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.

A strong foe is better than a weak friend.

Narcissus never wrote well nor was a friend.

Armani froze to the spot, unable to move. Her breath tightened in her lungs, shivers of awareness ran down her spine, the sudden energy zipping through her body announcing the shimmer of recognition.

The most wonderful street in the universe is Broadway. It is a world within itself. High and low, rich and poor, pass along at a rate peculiar to New York, and positively bewildering to a stranger.

I wanted to be a journalist, I thought it was glamorous and that I'd meet beautiful women in the rain.

I always would dream of making music videos. Whenever I make music, I always have a visual in my mind. I always see things.

And yet when you take Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, whatever, their combined killings in the name of religion -- well, that would be zero.

Acting is just playing the violin in an orchestra. Directing is being the conductor.

O, there is naught on earth worth being known but God and our own souls!

You've got to take responsibility and to do everything in your power to get results. Hopefully players look at that and try and follow it.

I think the first thing you should know is that nobody in country music 'made it' the same way. It's all different. There's no blueprint for success, and sometimes you just have to work at it.

There are times when a man should be content with what he has but never with what he is