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Don’t be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die.

In my youth I was but the slave of the high tide and the ebb tide of the sea, and the prisoner of half moons and full moons. Today I stand at this shore and I rise not nor do I go down.

The first feminist gesture is to say: “OK, they're looking at me. But I'm looking at them.” The act of deciding to look, of deciding that the world is not defined by how people see me, but how I see them.

The mind is its own place, and in it self can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.

Tout se réduit en somme au désir ou à l'absence de désir. Le reste est nuance.

Nos habitudes nous suivent même là où elles ne servent plus à rien.

Were I to wish for anything I would not wish for wealth and power, but for the passion of the possible, that eye which everywhere, ever young, ever burning, sees possibility.

A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words. This may sound easy. It isn’t. A lot of people think or believe or know they feel—but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling—not knowing or believing or thinking. Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself. To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn’t a poet can possibly imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time—and whenever we do it, we’re not poets. If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you’ve written one line of one poem, you’ll be very lucky indeed. And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world—unless you’re not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die. Does that sound dismal? It isn’t. It’s the most wonderful life on earth. Or so I feel.

The worst things are kept secret, and it destroys people.

To be sure, we are still aware that thinking calls not only for intelligence and profundity but above all for courage.

The first step to fixing something is to know no matter how destroyed it seems, it can always be saved.

Those who don't feel this love pulling them like a river, those who don't drink dawn like a cup of spring water or take sunset like supper, those who don't want to change, let them sleep.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. (Déjà essayé. Déjà échoué. Peu importe. Essaie encore. Échoue encore. Échoue mieux.)

Pour moi, être aimé n'est rien, c'est être préféré que je désire.

Avez-vous agi conformément au désir qui vous habite ? Ceci n’est pas une question facile à soutenir. C’est une question, je le prétends, qui n’a jamais été posée dans cette pureté ailleurs qu’elle ne peut l’être, c’est-à-dire dans le contexte analytique.

Il n’y a pas d’autre bien que ce qui peut servir à payer le prix de l’accès au désir.