I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand,that Joplin had the last drunken throat,that Morrison had the last enlightened mind.

I paced while he slept, ricocheting like a dove skidding the lonely confines of a Joseph Cornell box.

We were as Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world.

Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.”(Acceptance speech, National Book Award 2010 (Nonfiction), November 17, 2010)

I reflected on the fact that no matter how good I aspired to be, I was never going to achieve perfection

I learned from him that often contradiction is the clearest way to truth

Freedom is…the right to write the wrong words.

Observing people taking in the work I had watched Robert create was an emotional experience. It had left our private world. It was what I had always wanted for him, but I felt a slight...

He took twelve pictures that day.Within a few days he showed me the contact sheet. “This one has the magic,” he said. When I look at it now, I never see me. I see us.

Make your interactions with people transformational, not just transactional.

I’m more materialistic about myself than I am about objects

A real prison breakfast” I said.”Yeah, but we are free.”And that summed it up.

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth. For nothing is more precious than the life force and may the love of that force guide...

We imagined ourselves as the Sons of Liberty with a mission to preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary spirit of rock and roll. We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in...

…the law of empathy, by which he could, by his will, transfer himself into an object or a work of art, and thus inflence the outer world. He did not feel redeemed by the work...

It was like being at an Arabian hoedown with a band of psychedelic hillbillies (p. 171).

In the war of magic and religion, is magic ultimately the victor? Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer.

I don’t fuck much with the past but I fuck plenty with the future.

Why can’t I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.

Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer.

Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises. Don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned with doing good work. And make the right choices and protect...

Christ was a man worthy to rebel against, for he was rebellion itself.

Everything comes down so pasteurizedeverything comes down 16 degreesthey say your amplifier is too loudturn your amplifier downare we high all alone on our kneesmemory is just hips that swinglike a clockthe past projects fantastic...

Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself?