Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered.
Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph; killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true.
If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be seasick every day.
How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?
I fought against the bottle, but I had to do it drunk. Took my diamond to the pawn shop, but that don’t make it junk.
Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free!!
It’s time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again.
I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree.
It’s hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender.
Deprivation is the mother of poetry.
We are ugly but we have the music.
I wish I could say everything in one word. I hate all the things that can happen between the beginning of a sentence and the end.
May you be surrounded by friends and family, and if this is not your lot, may the blessings find you in your solitude.
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.
You go your way I’ll go your way too.
Every heart to Love will come, but like a refugee.
You lose your grip, and then you slip into the Masterpiece.
Any startling piece of work has a subversive element in it, a delicious element often. Subversion is only disagreeable when it manifests in political or social activity.
The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape.
We used to play music for fun. Much more than now. Now nobody picks up a guitar unless they’re paid for it.