If you want to get peace, you can get it as soon as you like if we all pull together. ... Think peace, live peace, and breathe peace and you'll get it as soon as you like.

How poetry comes to the poet is a mystery.

I found I was having continually to please the sort of people I'd always hated when I was a child. This began to bring me back to reality.

I always was a rebel...but on the other hand, I wanted to be loved and accepted...and not just be a loudmouth, lunatic, poet, musician. But I cannot be what I am not.

I regret profoundly that I was not an American and not born in Greenwich Village. It might be dying, and there might be a lot of dirt in the air you breathe, but this is where it's happening.

I wanted to give five solid years of being there all the time (with Sean). I hadn't seen my first son Julian grow up, and now there's a 17-year-old man on the phone talking about motorbikes. No matter what artistic gains I get, or gold records, if I can't make a success out of my relationship with the people I love, then everything else is bullsh*t.

You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!