my poems covered the bare places in my childhood like the fine, new skin under a scab that hasn't yet fallen off completely.

Memory, that library of the soul from which I will draw knowledge and experience for the rest of my life.

Down in the bottom of my childhood my father stands laughing.

Childhood is long and narrow like a coffin, and you can't get out of it on your own.

I fear / the place I have / in the memory of others. / They remind me of things / I myself have forgot.

my childhood grew thin and flat, paperlike. It was tired and threadbare, and in low moments it didn't look like it would last until I was grown up.

To bite off your shadow is neither easy nor painless. It demands a single-mindedness that is almost unknown in this day.

I'm not an addictive personality, I just like getting high, that's all.

God tells me how he wants the music played - and you get in his way.

All liars ... lie to protect themselves, to shield their egos from the raw pain of truth.

I've always believed in my talent. And I've always had more guts than talent.

It seems that great minds a hundred years ago saw what would happen today or tomorrow, while we to whom it is happening blind ourselves in order not to be disturbed in our daily routine.

Having wires strewn across your couch and across the floor is a big deal to a lot of people.

There's shames a man can never reason away, though he looks back and piles up reasons over them forty dozen deep. And maybe those are the shames a man never should reason away.

I am a mixture of idealist and realist.

Bait the hook well. This fish will bite.