the floor just needed a hug

It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days…Lightly, lightly—it’s the best advice ever given me. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly, my darling.

Writers end up writing about their obsessions. Things that haunt them; things they can’t forget; stories they carry in their bodies waiting to be released

Most of the writers I know are weird hybrids. There’s a strong streak of egomania coupled with extreme shyness. Writing’s kind of like exhibitionism in private. And there’s also a strange loneliness, and a desire to have some kind of conversation with people, but not a real great ability to do it in person.

It’s somewhat embarrassing, but when the raptors bark at each other to communicate, it’s a tortoise having sex.

Life is like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope - a slight change, and all patterns alter.

Writers don’t write from experience, though many are resistant to admit that they don’t. I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.

The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.

Don’t put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That’s why they’re called revolutions. People die, and nothing changes.