“Who am I helping, what am I breaking, what am I giving, what am I taking?”

“A poem is a naked person....Some people say that I am a poet.”

“Well, I try my best to be just like I am,But everybody wants you to be just like them,They sing while you slave and I just get bored”

“I was lingering out on the pavement. There was a missing person inside of myself and I needed to find him . . . I felt done for, an empty burned-out wreck . . . Wherever I am, I'm a '60s troubadour, a folk-rock relic, a wordsmith from bygone days, a fictitious head of state from a place nobody knows.”

“I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.”

“I can identify with other people and situations, but I tend not to. I would rather recall things from my own life, and I don't have to force myself. . . . Just being in certain environments triggers a response in my brain, a certain feeling I want to articulate. For some reason, I am attracted to self-destruction. I know that personal sacrifice has a great deal to do with how we live or don't live our lives.”

“you are right john cohen — quazimodo was right — mozart was right… . I cannot say the word eye any more … . when I speak this word eye, it is as if I am speaking of somebody’s eye that I faintly remember … . there is no eye — there is only a series of mouths — long live the mouths — your rooftop — if you don’t already know — has been demolished … . eye is plasma & you are right about that too — you are lucky — you don’t have to think about such things as eye & rooftops & quazimodo.”