“Genius, as we tend to talk about it today, is some sort of mysterious and combustible substance that burns brightly and burns out. It's the strange gift of poets and pop stars that allows them to p...”

“A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely. That is the o...”

“Shakespeare was not a genius. He was, without the distant shadow of doubt, the most wonderful writer who ever breathed. But not a genius. No angels handed him his lines, no fairies proofread for hi...”

“You can spend all day trying to think of some universal truth to set down on paper, and some poets try that. Shakespeare knew that it's much easier to string together some words beginning with the ...”

“This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

“I love you like a fat kid loves cake!”

“Hard work should be rewarded by good food.”

“Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted make-up.”

“Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as far as meaningless experiences go its pretty damn good.”

“Aside from the obvious, Francesca, what do you want in return for supplying information? Bones asked, getting back to the subject. You to take me, she replied at once. Not gonna happen! I spat, squ...”

“We are looking for a tongue that speaks with reverence for life, searching for an ecology of mind. Without it, we have no home, no place of our own within the creation. It is not only the vocabular...”

“But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them.”

“Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw? Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder goe wh...”