Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!

O‘ What may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

Where the mind goes, the man follows.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

I felt like my favorite writers have almost musical hooks in their work, whether it’s poetry or a hook at the end of a chapter that makes you want to read the next one. And I think that my favorite writers definitely have something musical about what they do, in saying something so relatable and universal and so simple.

As the poet said, ‚Only God can make a tree,‘ probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.

As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

I sometimes ask people, ‚Can you be aware of your own presence? Not the thoughts that you’re having, not the emotions that you’re having, but the very presence of your very being?‘ You become aware of your own presence by sensing the entire energy field in your body that is alive. And that is the totality of your presence.

I know some people might think it odd – unworthy even – for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people’s poet so I write for the people.

I like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more.

If I think too hard about a relationship, I’ll talk myself out of it.

Songs don’t have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I’ve done is about alienation… about where you fit in society.

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.

I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best – I mean, when I’m at my best – of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.

Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

We think that the world is a solid, vivid place, full of shape and colour and solid objects like this table and this microphone and so on, but we actually create that in our heads out of the bits of information that hit the back of our eyeballs or hit our eardrums or hit our tongues or whatever.

The brain is wider than the sky.

I wish I knew why I am so anguished.

It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false.

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

In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.

When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

I’m interested in the dream and subconscious mind, the peculiar dream-like quality of our lives, sometime nightmare quality of our lives.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

All of us should be on guard against beliefs that flatter ourselves. At the very least, we should check such beliefs against facts.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

God doesn’t dwell in the wooden, stony or earthen idols. His abode is in our feelings, our thoughts.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.

At ev’ry word a reputation dies.

We have communion with Christ in His thoughts, views, and purposes; for His thoughts are our thoughts according to our capacity and sanctity. Believers take the same view of matters as Jesus does; that which pleases Him pleases them, and that which grieves His grieves them also.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.

A lot of people tell me a lot of things about my conduct, my game, my future… but I try to stay away from their words of wisdom. I don’t let it distract me. On the field, you will be facing the ball alone. If you fail, you will the only one to blame. So, you should be the one deciding for yourself.

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

Today I love myself as I love my god: who could charge me with a sin today? I know only sins against my god; but who knows my god?

At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself.

We are all now connected by the Internet, like neurons in a giant brain.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

There’s no way to remove the observer – us – from our perceptions of the world.

I don’t digest things with my mind.

There can be no two opinions as to what a highbrow is. He is the man or woman of thoroughbred intelligence who rides his mind at a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea.

Some single mind must be master, else there will be no agreement in anything.

The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.

He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.

Man consists of two parts, his mind and his body, only the body has more fun.

Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds.

Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, – till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.