I think I need a drink.' 'Almost everybody does only they don't know it.

There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death.

Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors.

You've got to rise from the floor alone or fall back alone.

Bad luck for the young poet would be a rich father, an early marriage, an early success or the ability to do anything well.

First paycheck I get, I thought, I'm going to get myself a room near the downtown L.A. Public Library.

young or old, good or bad, I don't think anything dies as slow and as hard as a writer.