We may learn from children how large a part of our grievances is imaginary. But the pain is just as real.

False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade.

Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.

Our first and last love is self-love.

The scope of an intellect is not to be measured with a tape-string, or a character deciphered from the shape or length of a nose.

It is the passion that is in a kiss that gives to it its sweetness; it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it.

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.

The opinions of the misanthropical rest upon this very partial basis, that they adopt the bad faith of a few as evidence of the worthlessness of all.

The lively and mercurial are as open books, with the leaves turned down at the notable passages. Their souls sit at the windows of their eyes, seeing and to be seen.

Tears are nature's lotion for the eyes. The eyes see better for being washed by them.

The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.

Never worry about a book corrupting a child. Worry if your children are not getting ideas from books.

If emptiness is endless, then everything rests in emptiness.

My last bedside conversation in the hospital just a few weeks before Allen Ginsberg died was 'please take care of so and so. And the legacy of the Kerouac school.

My day-to-day wardrobe, I do mix it up. I'll wear something from Target along with something by YSL. It's about finding the right items that make you happy.

As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were, particeps criminis.

Hold your head up, there's a light in the sky I know your fed up but you must try to survive Each moment's precious, don't let life pass you by Keep focused, keep your eyes on the prize.

In the past, 'Avatar' would have won because Oscar voters loved to hand out awards to big productions, like 'Ben-Hur.' Today it's fashionable to give the Oscar to a small movie that nobody saw.

Laugh with people laughing, cry with people crying, but don't fall into the river of world illusion. Stay on the banks.

The Exxon Valdez spill triggered a swift and strong response that changed policies about shipping, about double-hulled construction. A number of laws came into place.

It would take me years of reading, thought, and experience to learn again that in this world limits are not only inescapable but indispensable.