“Good or ill, life is life; you only realize that when you have to risk it.”

By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Context: You have to take risks … We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen. Every day, God gives us the sun — and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day, we try to pretend that we haven't perceived that moment, that it doesn't exist — that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment. It may arrive in the instant when we are doing something mundane, like putting our front-door key in the lock; it may lie hidden in the quiet that follows the lunch hour or in the thousand and one things that all seem the same to us. But that moment exists — a moment when all the power of the stars becomes a part of us and enables us to perform miracles.

The New York Times interview (1994)

Access Hollywood Interview (May 2005)

Official Website (2009)

Variant: When You've lost it all.... thats when you realize that Life is Beautiful.
Source: The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star

"The Brooklyn Divines." Brooklyn Union (Brooklyn, NY), 1883.

Source: No Exit and Three Other Plays