I'm not really quiet or shy. Ask any of my friends! But I always ground my poetry in life itself. Poetry is an art of language, though, so I am always aware of every word's meaning, or multiple meanings.

I wish the stage were as narrow as the wire of a tighrope dancer so that no incompetent would dare step upon it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There were a couple of occasions in India when I was twenty that felt to me like going out with a thimble in your hand, hoping to catch a drop of rain, and having the ocean land on your head. These experiences convinced me that there is an absolute love that pervades everything.

David James Duncan

You are the grim, goal-oriented ones who will not believe that the joy is in the journey rather than the destination no matter how many times it has been proven to you.

Stephen King

Intelligence: I was asked tonight why I refuse to have truck with intellectuals after business hours. But of course I won t. 1. I am not an intellectual. Two minutes talk with Aldous Huxley, William Glock, or any of the New Statesman crowd would expose me utterly. 2. I am too tired after my day's work to man the intellectual palisade. 3. When my work is finished I want to eat, drink, smoke, and relax. 4. I don't know very much, but what I do know I know better than anybody, and I don't want to argue about it. I know what I think about an actor or an actress, and am not interested in what anybody else thinks. My mind is not a bed to be made and re-made.

James Agate

Joy can only be real only if people look upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.

Leo Tolstoy

Indubitably, Magic is one of the subtlest and most difficult of the sciences and arts. There is more opportunity for errors of comprehension, judgment and practice than in any other branch of physics.

Aleister Crowley

The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Normally, children learn to gauge rather accurately from the tone of their parent's voice how seriously to take his threats. Of course, they sometimes misjudge and pay the penalty.

Louis Kaplan

I wake up at 5:30, 6 in the morning, but don't head into the office right away. I like to hang out with my wife, talk about things, get some coffee, you know.

Ice Cube

Until thy feet have trod the RoadAdvise not wayside folk,Nor till thy back has borne the LoadBreak in upon the broke.Chase not with undesired largesseOf sympathy the heartWhich, knowing her own bitterness,Presumes to dwell apart.Employ not that glad hand to raiseThe God-forgotten headTo Heaven and all the neighbours' gaze --Cover thy mouth instead.The quivering chin, the bitten lip,The cold and sweating brow,Later may yearn for fellowship --Not now, you ass, not now!Time, not thy ne'er so timely speech,Life, not thy views thereon,Shall furnish or deny to eachHis consolation.Or, if impelled to interfere,Exhort, uplift, advise,Lend not a base, betraying earTo all the victim's cries.Only the Lord can understand,When those first pangs begin,How much is reflex action andHow much is really sin.E'en from good words thyself refrain,And tremblingly admitThere is no anodyne for painExcept the shock of it.So, when thine own dark hour shall fall,Unchallenged canst thou say:I never worried you at all,For God's sake go away!

Rudyard Kipling, The Comforters

A liberal education is at the heart of a civil society, and at the heart of a liberal education is the act of teaching.

A. Bartlett Giamatti

I've always looked for the perfect life to step into. I've taken all the paths to get where I wanted.But no matter where I go, I still come home me.

Layne Staley