A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

Ain’t nothing like a good cry.

We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.

The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head.

They would not find me changed from him they knew – only more sure of all I thought was true.

The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.

Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?

I’d rather tell you how I really feel.

Don’t get the impression that you arouse my anger. You see, one can only be angry with those he respects.

The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.

The loss of young first love is so painful that it borders on the ludicrous.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

People are underestimating the force of angry kids.

My songs have always been frustrating themes, relationships that I’ve had. And now that I’m in love, I expect it to be really happy, or at least there won’t be half as much anger as there was.

You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent.

I don’t think there’s an option for me to fall in love slowly or at medium speed. I either do, or I don’t.

When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.

What we feel and think and are is to a great extent determined by the state of our ductless glands and viscera.

I’m an emotional person.

I’m nobody, who are you?

I think women go crazy for a reason. It’s not like it just happens.

Depression begins with disappointment. When disappointment festers in our soul, it leads to discouragement.

There are no rules when it comes to love.

When we’re falling in love or out of it, that’s when we most need a song that says how we feel. Yeah, I write a lot of songs about boys. And I’m very happy to do that.

Doo-wop is special music to me because it’s so straightforward and melody-driven and captures emotions.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn‘ fool if they weren’t.

Everything is clearer when you’re in love.

It’s impossible to live a life totally free of feelings. God created all of us to be emotional creatures, and feelings are a big part of our lives.

I read poetry to save time.

To a guy like me, a laugh is full of information.

Everyone has been in love, at some point or another.

Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‚yours,‘ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.

I want the reader to feel something is astonishing – not the ‚what happens‘ but the way everything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me.

Our judgments when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

You can’t blame gravity for falling in love.

A subject for a great poet would be God’s boredom after the seventh day of creation.

Some people feel affronted when something they thought to be true doesn’t happen. If that’s the case, then your sense of risk is much higher, and that leads to risk aversion. You need to be able to be comfortable in uncertainty.

You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I’ll rise.

I would love to sign on to do a movie if it was the right role and if it was the right script, because I would be taking time away from music to tell a big grand story, and spend all of my time and pouring all of my emotions into being someone else. So for me to do that, it would have to be a story worth telling.

The uncertainty of parenting can bring up feelings in us that range from frustration to terror.

It is necessary to fall in love… if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway.

There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls, but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts.

If I’m the people’s poet, then I ought to be in people’s hands – and, I hope, in their heart.

There is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

I was ready to quit music. It felt to me like music equalled death.

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.

If I cry, it’s because I’m very angry and I can’t do anything about it because I’ve run into a dead end. That’s when the tears would come down.

Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.

It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.

If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

I’m the type person, my safe place to be emotional is the booth.

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.

Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.