“Writing anything, it sorta starts the way you'd build a castle at the beach. You're just taking your hands and you're mounting up sand.”

“Perhaps it's good you're not going to write anymore: you'd have to start considering all those dull things like your relation to your audience, the relation between your personality and your poetry, the relation between your poetry and all the poetry before it.”

“When your feelings build up and harden and die inside, then you're in big trouble.”

“Height gives you a wonderful feeling of grandeur. You're the king of the castle up here.”

“You're in America now," I said. "Our idea of diplomacy is showing up with a gun in one hand and a sandwich in the other and asking which you'd prefer.”

“I'm just saying it's not all sand castles and ninjas.”

“Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”

“I could only write at the beach, and I kept getting sand in my typewriter.”

“When you make a decision or take an action based off of something that isn’t true, it is absolutely guaranteed to fall apart; like building a sand castle where it will be washed away by the tide.”

“Put your hands to the constellations
The way you look should be a sin, you're my sensation.”