Don't talk about it - you'll talk it away. Let the ideas flow from your mind to the page without exposing them to air. Especially hot air.

We all dream profusely every night, yet by morning we've forgotten ninety percent of what went on. That's why poets are such important members of society. Poets remember our dreams for us.

One of my books is a hallucinogen, an aphrodisiac, a mood elevator, an intellectual garage door opener, and a metaphysical trash compactor. They'll do everything except rotate your tires.

The Japanese have become so smitten with the Western condiment - its texture as silky as a kimono, its tang as understated as the tang of Zen - that today they have a word for mayonnaise junkie: mayora.

I believe in nothing, everything is sacred. I believe in everything, nothing is sacred.

One tended to lose one’s bearings in the presence of willful and persistent acts of craziness, and the more gentle the act, the crazier it seemed, as if rage and violence, being closer to the norm, were easier to accommodate.

Western civilization was declining too fast for comfort, but too slowly to be very exciting.