My mother and father had so many ups and downs and stayed with each other and helped each other. My mother took in ironing and she was a waitress. My father was working in the factory and he did people's tax returns.

Grief isn't all tears.

I don't know why, the very first word on my very first record is 'Jesus.' I still invoke him as an entity to reckon with.

John Coltrane, he talks to god. He starts playing his solo, he might play for 14 minutes. For 14 minutes, it seems like he's talking to god, but he always takes a hold of the melody.

I wasn't attractive, I wasn't very verbal, I wasn't very smart in school. I wasn't anything that showed the world I was something special, but I had this tremendous hope all the time. I had this tremendous spirit that kept me going... I was a happy child, because I had this feeling that I was going to go beyond my body physical... I just knew it.

Eyeing the traffic circulating the lobby hung with bad art. Big invasive stuff unloaded on Stanley Bard in exchange for rent. The hotel is an energetic, desperate haven for scores of gifted hustling children from every rung of the ladder. Guitar bums and stoned-out beauties in Victorian dresses. Junkie poets, playwrights, broke-down filmmakers, and French actors. Everybody passing through here is somebody, if not in the outside world.

I think it's good for people to see the positive beauty that can flower from the deepest grieving.