Great Throughts Treasury

"I have a daughter who's 11 years old. Maybe she'll grow up independent and really heavy and become a movie star and she'll play me in my life story."

"I hated the soup and felt little for the can."

"I have another son that's in Iraq right now. So, it's not all the way over for us. But, if we can taste victory this time, I know it will come for us next time."

"I have great respect for my parents. I got such beautiful things from both of them. It doesn't mean that we didn't have our rough times, but they were remarkable people who were open-minded, creative and hard-working, and had great senses of humor."

"I imagined a lot of things. That I would shine. That I'd be good. I'd dwell bareheaded on a summit turning a wheel that would turn the earth undetected, amongst the clouds, I would have some influence; be of some avail."

"I imagined myself as Frida to Diego, both muse and maker. I dreamed of meeting an artist to love and support and work with side by side."

"I have loved books all my life. There is nothing more beautiful in our material world than the book."

"I just think it will be a neat time."

"I just want to be myself and Peter Pan clan was coming from. We would never grow."

"I immersed myself in books and rock 'n' roll, the adolescent salvation."

"I knew if I lived long enough I would be poet laureate of something."

"I knew one day I would stop and he would keep on going, but until then nothing could tear us apart."

"I know I'm a strong performer. I'm not an evolved musician."

"I learned a lot from Arthur Rimbaud. People talk about how he wanted to be a seer and do that through the derangement of the senses. What they forget was that he also advocated, sternly and austerely, that one must be able to go through all that - and then articulate it."

"I like gettin' old."

"I look at these kids, you know, and I could be their mother, their mistress, their older woman. Some of the kids at the concerts are 15."

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

"I never felt oppressed because of my gender. When I'm writing a poem or drawing, I'm not a female; I'm an artist."

"I met DeKooning once in a bar and he put his hand on my knee right away. I knew I could model for him."

"I loved books; I read my childhood away. I was more interested in my interior world."

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

"I never thought I was gonna live to 30."

"I personally am not interested in people trying to pigeonhole me."

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

"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 preferred an artist who transformed his time, not mirrored it.[reference to Andy Warhol]"

"I think I'm constantly in a state of adjustment."

"I taped sheets of paper to the wall, but I didn?t draw. I slid my guitar under the bed. At night, alone, I just sat and waited."

"I slipped an envelope with the black and white shots of Woman I that I had taken at the Modern into my pocket but I left behind my failed attempts at painting her portrait, rolls of canvas splashed in umber, pinks, and green, souvenirs of a gone ambition. I was too curious about the future to look back? I said goodbye to my stuff? There?s always new stuff, that?s for sure."

"I thought it was funny that Robert was so concerned about the content of my work. He was worried that I wouldn?t be successful if my work was too provocative. He always wanted me to write a song that he could dance to. In the end I would point out that he was a bit like his father, wanting me to take a commercial path. But I had no interest, and I was always too crude."

"I was getting frustrated with writing; it wasn?t physical enough."

"I was never a singer; I can't play any instruments; I had no training. Plus, I was brought up in a time when all the great rock stars were male. I didn't have any template for what I was doing. I did what I did out of frustration and concern."

"I understood that in this small space of time we had mutually surrendered our loneliness and replaced it with trust."

"I thought to myself that he contained a whole universe that I had yet to know."

"I thought of something I learned from reading Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas by Mari Sandoz. Crazy Horse believes that he will be victorious in battle, but if he stops to take spoils from the battlefield, he will be defeated. He tattoos lightning bolts on the ears of his horses so the sight of them will remind him of this as he rides. I tried to apply this lesson to the things at hand, careful not to take spoils that were not rightfully mine."

"I want to make 40. I want to see it."

"I understood that what matters is the work: the string of words propelled by God becoming a poem, the weave of color and graphite scrawled upon the sheet that magnifies His motion. To achieve within the work a perfect balance of faith and execution. From this state of mind comes a light, life-changed."

"I want to be around a really long time. I want to be a thorn in the side of everything as long as possible."

"I was attracted to Robert's work because his visual vocabulary was akin to my poetic one, even if we seemed to be moving toward different destinations. Robert always would tell me, Nothing is finished until you see it."

"I wanted to go to Portland because it's a really good book town."

"I was raised in rural south Jersey, and there was no culture there. There was a small library, and that was it. There was nothing else."

"I was so unhealthy as a child, and at least three or four times my parents were told to get ready, that I would not make it."

"I wasn't worried, though. I just needed a break and I wasn't going to give up."

"I would rather write or record something great and have it overlooked than do mediocre work and have it be popular."

"I wish I could just project everything on the paper."

"If I feel any marginalization, it's because the things that concern me aren't so important to other people."

"I went to Glassboro State Teacher's College in New Jersey, which was about all I could afford because I put myself through school."

"I was still a baby bird when I was 28."

"I'd just make sure with anything I say I know what I'm talking about."

"I wrote every day. I don't think I could have written 'Just Kids' had I not spent all of the 80s developing my craft as a writer."