“No gray hairs streak my soul, no grandfatherly fondness there! I shake the world with the might of my voice, and walk—handsome, twentytwoyearold.”

“She might be pointing to a doorway, or a person, or the sky. But such things were so common to my eyes, so undistinguished, that they would register as "nothing" I walked in a gray world of nothing.”

“Oh, torture. Torture. My pubic hairs went gray.”

“My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.”

“I stood stonelike at midnight, suspended in my masquerade.
I combed my hair till it was just right and commanded the night brigade.
I was open to pain and crossed by the rain and I walked on a crooked crutch.
I strolled all alone through a fallout zone and came out with my soul untouched.”

“These wrinkles are nothing
These gray hairs are nothing,
This stomach which sags
with old food, these bruised
and swollen ankles,
my darkening brain,
they are nothing.
I am the same boy
my mother used to kiss.”

“It was not uncommon to walk in the door of their home and find my mother sitting on the sofa reading over a manuscript with shampoo horns sculpted into her hair. Anne Sexton's voice would be blasting from the speakers.”

“Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have found the soul walking upon my path." For the soul walks upon all paths.”

“I carry the place around the world in my heart but sometimes I try to shake it off in my dreams”

“What could you give me," I ask, my voice shaking, "to make me forget… that you forgot about me?”