This is every writer's nightmare - the sudden breakdown of meaning in the language that sustains and supports us.

As for the depiction of the Catholic church, it's not meant to be a prediction

It occurs to me that our survival may depend upon our talking to one another.

The Great Change is when humankind accepts its role as part of the natural order of the universe instead of its role as a cancer

Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers.

If everyone could understand the working of a psychopath's mind, we undoubtedly would be closer to insanity ourselves.

Nobody gets beyond a petroleum economy. Not while there's petroleum there.

Seduction... was both a science and art - a blend of skill, discipline, proximity, and opportunity. Mostly proximity.

Poets are the mad midwives to reality. They see not what is, nor what can be, but what must become.

History viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians.

The shortest route to courage is absolute ignorance.

The early months of marriage often are times of critical tumult, - whether that of a shrimp pool or of deeper water, - which afterwards subside into cheerful peace.

I owe my solitude to other people.

Valor is stability not of legs and arms but of courage and the soul.

Jazz I regard as an American folk music; not the only one, but a very powerful one which is probably in the blood and feeling of the American people more than any other style of folk music.

It takes courage to recognize the real as opposed to the convenient.

I think creative blocks come from people's life journeys. If you don't know who you are or what you're about or what you believe in it's really pretty impossible to be creative.

I want balance in my life.

There is magic in sincere forgiveness - magic to heal.

Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes; spiritualism means theaffirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting loose of hope.

Would you like to hear a nice definition of jealousy? It's the feeling that you get when someone you absolutely detest is having a wonderful time without you.