The elegance of a really good screenplay, I admire it. I can't do it.

One can bear anything. The pain we cannot bear will kill us outright.

Life should always be like this. ... Like lingering over a good meal.

No matter how unappealing, each of them imagines he is somehow worthy.

The stupid things you say in the rain, that can't ever be washed away.

It was only natural to want to destroy something you could never have.

And if there is no god? You act as if there is, and it's the same thing.

When you started thinking it was easy, you were forgetting what it cost.

My mother had been a solitary chef. It was her recreation and her escape.

without my wounds, who was I? My scars were my face, my past was my life.

As an undergraduate, I had not studied literature - I was a history major.

Poppies bleed petals of sheer excess. You and I, this sweet battle ground.

Who are you? the band sang. I tried to remember but I really couldn't say.

I could hear the icy winds of Sweden, but he didn't seem to feel the chill.

I've been depressed many times in my life. But under it all I'm an optimist.

I felt beautiful but also interrupted. I wasn't used to being so complicated.

It's all I ever really wanted, that revelation. The possibility of fixed stars.

Find someone who will tremble for your touch, someone whose fingers are a poem.

A novel is like a dream in which everyone is you. They’re all parts of yourself.

This is what happens when you fall in love. You're looking at a natural disaster.

These people picked you up and played with you and then left you lying in the rain

Oleander time, she said. Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind.

How can I shed tears for a man I should never have allowed to touch me in any way?

Nineteen is as alive as 40-plus. I can vividly remember 19 and how I saw the world.

she’s not as pretty as you,” I said “But she’s a simpler girl,” my mother whispered.

Although she was giddy with exhaustion, sleep was a lover who refused to be touched.

Only peons made excusses for themselves she taught me. Never apologize, never explain.

Just because a poet said something didn’t mean it was true, only that it sounded good.

I always read poetry before I write, to sensitize me to the rhythms and music of language.

Love is a check, that can be forged, that can be cashed. Love is a payment that comes due.

Don't turn over the rocks if you don't want to see the pale creatures who live under them.

I closed my eyes to watch tiny dancers like jeweled birds cross the dark screen of my eyelids.

Panic was the worst thing. When you panicked, you couldn't see possibilities. Then came despair.

I despise places where you have to have an assigned seat. Makes me feel like I'm at the airport.

What can I say about life? Do I praise it for letting you live, or damn it for allowing the rest?

When I read, I want to be fully transported to another place. I want to feel things, smell things.

As an artist, you can never get what you want. What you do never approaches what you want it to be.

No matter where I was, my compass pointed west. I would always know what time it was in California.

In our exterior life, we can be only one person. But in our imagination, we can be anyone, anywhere.

As a person with terrible handwriting, I love the computer. I've waited all my life for the computer.

My thoughts about God are vague and abstract. My connection with the energy of the universe is shaky.

The sound of her laughter was sticky as sap, the smell of night-blooming jasmine soft as a milk bath.

Don't hoard the past. Don't cherish anything. Burn it. The artist is the phoenix who burns to emerge.

How easy I was. Like a limpet I attached myself to anything, anyone who showed me the least attention.

She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.

Whenever she thought she could not feel more alone, the universe peeled back another layer of darkness.

...You know the mistrust of heights is the mistrust of self, you don't know whether you're going to jump.

I felt like an undeveloped photograph that he was printing, my image rising to the surface under his gaze.

her scruffy innoscense to impregnate with his dreams. reason was seductive, it gave the appearance of truth

Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow.

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