we only asked for leopards to guard our thinning dreams.

All a guy needed was a chance. Somebody was alway controlling who got a chance and who didn't.

I held her wrists and then I got it through the eyes: hatred, centuries deep and true. I was wrong and graceless and sick. all the things I had learned had been wasted. there was no creature living as foul as I and all my poems were false.

Pain is strange. A cat killing a bird, a car accident, a fire.... Pain arrives, BANG, and there it is, it sits on you. It's real. And to anybody watching, you look foolish. Like you've suddenly become an idiot. There's no cure for it unless you know somebody who understands how you feel, and knows how to help.

the grace is being able to like rock music, symphony music, jazz … anything that contains the original energy of joy.

Maybe when I get in the grave, things will be beautiful.

You can steal my women but don't play with my whiskey.