... what is great poetry, after all, but the continuation of the human voice after death?

Once I worshipped Keats for dying young. Now I think it's braver to die old.

It's important to know what you're going to spend your life on, and the only way you're going to find that is by connecting with the force inside yourself.

Books go out into the world, travel mysteriously from hand to hand, and somehow find their way to the people who need them at the times when they need them ... Cosmic forces guide such passings-along.

I believe that there's a force of life in the universe, and that when we're writing or making music or painting, we're likely to connect with that flow.

Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.

I'm interested in what happens to people when they get into that publicity machine. We tend to think things have changed, but there's still a deep sexism underlying the way women are treated publicly.