The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end.

* to know a lot of people I love pieces of, and to want to synthesize those pieces in me somehow, be it by painting or writing. * to know that millions of others are unhappy and that life is a gentleman's agreement to grin and paint your face gay so others will feel they are silly to be unhappy, and try to catch the contagion of joy, while inside so many are dying of bitterness and unfulfillment.

Ever since I was small I loved feeling somebody comb my hair. It made me go all sleepy & peaceful.

I wanted to be where nobody I knew could ever come.

I think that as far as language goes I'm an American, I'm afraid, my accent is American, my way of talk is an American way of talk, I'm an old-fashioned American. That's probably one of the reasons why I'm in England now and why I'll always stay in England.

A fierce brief fusion which dreamers call real, and realists, an illusion; an insight like the flight of birds.

Not being perfect hurts.