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

If evil means to be self-motivated, to be the center of one’s own universe, to live on one’s own terms, then every artist, every thinker, every original mind, is evil.

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

I felt like time was a great sea, and I was floating on the back of a turtle, and no sails broke the horizon.

Beauty was empty as a gourd, vain as a parakeet. But it had power. It smelled of musk and oranges and made you close your eyes in a prayer.

That was the thing about words, they were clear and specific-chair, eye, stone- but when you talked about feelings, words were too stiff, they were this and not that, they couldn't include all the meanings. In defining, they always left something out.

To know I was beautiful in his eyes made me beautiful.