“Love is my gift to the world. I fill myself with love, and I send that love out into the world.”

“Sometimes with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse unreturn'd love; But now I think there is no unreturn'd love—the pay is certain, one way or another; (I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not return'd; Yet out of that, I have written these songs.) ”

“To my son Dylan.I’ve written this book for you.It’s a guide for how not to live your life.I’m sending it out into the world in the hopesthat someday it will find you.Even if I never do.All my love,Dad”

“I have loved no part of the world like this and I have loved no women as I love you. You're my human Africa. I love your smell as I love these smells. I love your dark bush as I love the bush here, you change with the light as this place does, so that one all the time is loving something different and yet the same. I want to spill myself out into you as I want to die here.”

“I find myself wondering why—out of all the people in all the world I could ever have loved—I had to fall in love with someone who was taken away from me.”

“I do not love; I do not love anybody except myself. That is a rather shocking thing to admit. I have none of the selfless love of my mother. I have none of the plodding, practical love. . . . . I am, to be blunt and concise, in love only with myself, my puny being with its small inadequate breasts and meager, thin talents. I am capable of affection for those who reflect my own world.”