An innocent man is a sin before God. Inhuman and therefore untrustworthy. No man should live without absorbing the sins of his kind, the foul air of his innocence, even if it did wilt rows of angel trumpets and cause them to fall from their vines.

Lonely was much better than alone.

Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.

Listen up. Let me tell you something. A man ain’t a goddamn ax. Chopping, hacking, busting every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can’t chop down because they’re inside.

Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul.

Love is divine only and difficult always.

Sometimes the names were humiliating, deliberately so. Somebody would pick out your flaw. If you were little, they would call you Shorty. And if you were angry, they would call you the Devil.