“I don't think anybody doubts whether I've done some bad things. The question is: what, of course, and how and, maybe even most importantly, why?”

“In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.”

“I don't know why I started writing. I don't know why anybody does it. Maybe they're bored, or failures at something else.”

“I don't worry too much about the choices I've made. When my days are over I'll have to answer for everything I've done. I don't grieve in any way about bad consequences for things I've done in my life.”

“The one thing I don't wanna be is, I don't wanna be forgotten. And I think I've done a pretty good job of that.”

“I've never really had bad chemistry with anybody. And I think you just really have to be open.”

“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”

“When I start writing a poem, I don't think about models or about what anybody else in the world has done.”

“To me this question whether liberty is a good or a bad thing appears as irrational as the question whether fire is a good or a bad thing. It is both good and bad according to time, place, and circumstance, and a complete answer to the question, In what cases is liberty good and in what cases is it bad? would involve not merely a universal history of mankind, but a complete solution of the problems which such a history would offer.”

“I've done bad things with relish, and good things with pickles.”