“I really would like to stop working forever–never work again, never do anything like the kind of work I’m doing now–and do nothing but write poetry and have leisure to spend the day outdoors and go to museums and see friends. And I’d like to keep living with someone — maybe even a man — and explore relationships that way. And cultivate my perceptions, cultivate the visionary thing in me. Just a literary and quiet city-hermit existence.”

“I've never loved any one else the way I love you. I'm full of poetry now. Rot and poetry. Rotten poetry.''Stop it. Harry, why do you have to turn into a devil now?''I don't like to leave anything,' the man said. 'I don't like to leave things behind.”

“Do nothing that you would not like God to see. Say nothing you would not like God to hear. Write nothing you would not like God to read. Go no place where you would not like God to find you. Read no book of which you would not like God to say, "Show it to Me."Never spend your time in such a way that you would not like to have God say, "What are you doing?”

“I do not like work even when someone else is doing it.”

“Sam was your brother, and Trick was your friend, but what they did had nothing to do with you. You don't have to choose. Just because me and your dad couldn't live together, didn't mean you had to stop loving one of us, did it? Doesn't work like that. Love doesn't work like that.”

“I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work. Which meant that life did not feel like work.”