“When I create, I feel that I am a participant in the grand pageant of life, a part of the ongoing creative engine of the universe. I don't know if that feeling is enough to replace the solace of religion in the lives of most people, but it is for me.”

“I know whether or not I am confused most readily by noticing--being mindful of--my capacity for feeling caring concern. ... when I feel myself in caring connection--encouraging, consoling, or appreciating--I feel the twin pleasures of clarity and goodness. It doesn't matter if the connection I feel is to myself or a person I know or people I don't know or even the whole world. The lively impulse of caring is what counts. [p. 20]”

“My therapist told me I need to learn to love myself. It sounds easy enough, but really, how do you just wake up one day and learn that? It feels like something you should just do involuntarily, like swallowing or blinking, but now I have to work on it. It feels so forced. I mean, I know I went to a good school, and people tell me I'm smart and creative, but I don't KNOW that. I don't know how to make myself feel that.”

“The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.”

“Most people in this country are looking for literature that is useful. They feel that just exploring their feelings is good enough - they should be reading about leveraged buy-outs or how to get thin. We live in a culture that is so absolutely, madly focused on commercialism and on creating money and completely turned away from any other kind of creative value. People don't generally turn to poetry unless they're bereaved or have fallen in love. Or in adolescence, when their feelings are very strong and turbulent. I think most of us are dying for lack of spirit in this culture.”

“i will learn how to love a person and then i will teach you and then we will know"seen from a great enough distance i cannot be seeni feel this as an extremely distinct sensationof feeling like shit; the effect of small childrenis that they use declarative sentences and then look at your facewith an expression that says, ‘you will never do enoughfor the people you love’; i can feel the universe expandingand it feels like no one is trying hard enoughthe effect of this is an extremely shitty sensationof being the only person alive; i have been alone for a very long timeit will take an extreme person to make me feel less alonethe effect of being alone for a very long timeis that i have been thinking very hard and learningabout mortality, loneliness, people, society, and love; i am afraidthat i am not learning fast enough; i can feel the universe expandingand it feels like no one has ever tried hard enough; when i cried in your roomit was the effect of an extremely distinct sensation that ‘i am the only personalive,’ ‘i have not learned enough,’ and ‘i can feel the universe expandingand making things be further apartand it feels like a declarative sentencewhose message is that we must try harder”