Fame an fortune are nothing if you're not happy and healthy.
Anyone can express himself or herself, but what writers and poets want to do in their work, more than simply express themselves, is communicate.
there isn't enough of anything as long as we live. But at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance prevails.
And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.
Life and death matters, yes. And the question of how to behave in this world, how to go in the face of everything. Time is short and the water is rising.
If we're lucky, writer and reader alike, we'll finish the last line or two of a short story and then just sit for a minute, quietly. Ideally, we'll ponder what we've just written or read; maybe our hearts or intellects will have been moved off the peg just a little from where they were before. Our body temperature will have gone up, or down, by a degree. Then, breathing evenly and steadily once more, we'll collect ourselves, writers and readers alike, get up, "created of warm blood and nerves" as a Chekhov character puts it, and go on to the next thing: Life. Always life.
That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.
It is wonderful. It truly is. It is the only thing that is real! It's you against me, it's challenging another guy's manhood. With gloves. Words cannot describe that feeling of being a man, of being a gladiator, of being a warrior. It's irreplaceable.
Three rules: I do not eat too much; I do not worry too much; and, if I do my best, I believe that what happens, happens for the best.
Hatespeak is usually more honest than lovespeak, and it's always better than doublespeak.
After all, in today's music scene every band seems to steal from other bands.