what matters most is how well you walk through the fire

The secret is writing down one simple line after another.

Beauty is nothing, beauty won’t stay. You don’t know how lucky you are to be ugly, because if people like you, you know it’s for something else.

I am not a man who looks for solutions in God or politics. If somebody else wants to do the dirty work and create a better world for us and he can do it, I will accept it.

I was laying in bed one night and I thought 'I'll just quit - to hell with it.' And another little voice inside me said 'Don't quit - save that tiny little ember of spark.' And never give them that spark because as long as you have that spark, you can start the greatest fire again.

I went over to see Marina two or three or four times a week. I knew as long as I could see the girl I would be all right…. Soon after, I got a letter from Fay. She and the child were living in a hippie commune in New Mexico. It was a nice place, she said. Marina would be able to breathe there. She enclosed a little drawing the girl had made for me.

…He was always high on drugs. I was not a drug man, but in case I wanted to hide from myself for a few days, I knew I could get anything I wanted from him.