The sun does what it does because the earth tilts.

I was always a reader. In the fifth grade, I got some sort of prize for having read hundreds of books from the library.

Orwell says somewhere that no one ever writes the real story of their life. The real story of a life is the story of its humiliations.

Society imposes an identity on you because of the way you look. Your struggle as a self has to do with an identity being imposed on you that you know is not your identity.

You probably have to split yourself in various ways just in order to survive, and to think of yourself as a multitude.

I would say that when I write prose I'm a more socially responsible person. I'm much more a citizen of the world. But the instability of the poetry, the emotional jaggedness, is also me.

You don't think of yourself as your external representation, or even your national origin or anything like that. You don't reduce yourself to that. That's kind of unthinkable.

I resist thinking of myself as a teacher. I think of myself as a writer who has pulled a fast one and hoodwinked this institution into giving me a job and health insurance.

I think that when you reveal things that are going to cause pain, you have rhetorical resources in poetry.

We all think of ourselves as our subjectivity, our consciousness.

It's important for all writers to try to figure out what they're doing.

Endless night of Eternal love in the heart of the French Quarter. Tears of Crimson, the New Orleans Vampire Bar.

Mortal fate is hard. You'd best get used to it.

Never do today what you can do tomorrow, because something may occur to make you regret your premature action.

It is like confessing to a murder.

Every spendthrift passion has its attendant courtiers.

Here you can be a billionaire, like Mark Zuckerberg rich, but you are going to die and you are here for a while and ultimately all of your stuff is kind of like a rental.

It doesn't feel good when you're put down, and especially for no uncertain reason.

When I was eight years old, I knew I wanted to make films.

Criminality should be exterminated by disabling all notorious and irreclaimable criminals.

I've always wanted to work with Blair, and finally the timing was right. I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. I think he's a hugely underrated actor in Hollywood.