I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.

I'll tell you a little secret I learned while I was deployed, kiddo. Every day you're alive is a special occasion.

Rembrandt, your life isn't written in the past. Yes, your past makes you who you are, but when you get here, you have the choice of who you want to be. Your life is written in the right now. Your choices are the only thing you can control. You have to let go of the rest. And occasionally, ask for help.

"Pain, mistakes, failure, heart-stompingness, embarrassment, rejection, frustration, anger, loneliness, and occasionally feeling alienated are all part of the ride and are every bit as important as love, laughter, joy excitement, success, romance, hope, accomplishment, and trust.

If pain comes ? and it will occasionally come ? feel the pain, but don't suffer.

There were occasions when Shakespeare was a very bad writer indeed. You can see how often in books of quotations. People who like quotations love meaningless generalizations.

"Occasionally, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant -you just don't know which. You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you'd mapped out for yourself. Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that crazy idea in the first place.

The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by. A writer is a gunner, sometimes waiting in the blind for something to come in, sometimes roaming the countryside hoping to scare something up.

I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.

That's what I do: I make coffee and occasionally succumb to suicidal nihilism. But you shouldn't worry - poetry is still first. Cigarettes and alcohol follow

I am in the middle of it: chaos and poetry; poetry and love and again, complete chaos. Pain, disorder, occasional clarity; and at the bottom of it all: only love; poetry. Sheer enchantment, fear, humiliation. It all comes with love

There are occasions and causes, why and wherefore in all things.

Authoritarian, paralyzing, circular, occasionally elliptical stock phrases, also jocularly referred to as nuggets of wisdom, are a malignant plague, one of the very worst ever to ravage the earth.

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. this is my symphony.

Occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile."..' Opportunity is fleeting, experiment dangerous, and judgement difficult.

Somehow the idyllic existence I envisioned never quite came to pass, but aside from the occasional culinary disaster, my marriage wasn't bad.

No one, from pontiffs to professors, has a monopoly on the truth. In the end, we are all just travelers--not scientists or mystics or any one brand of thinker. By nature, we are scientists and mystics, reductionists and holists, left-brained and right-brained, mixed up creatures trying to catch an occasional glimpse of the truth. The best we can do is to be tolerant of both sides of our nature--knowing that these reflect the twin aspect of the universe--and learn from whatever wisdom is offered.

My mother is a firm believer in the long pause, useful in interrogations, proclamations of truth, and the occasional cutting dead of someone without their knowing it.

I'm planning, you see, to try to confine myself to the truth. That's hard for an old, inveterate fantasy martyr and liar who has never hesitated to give truth the form he felt the occasion demanded.

Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is the special occasion.

Anya looked upon Nin admirably. Having him as a partner-in-crime-if only on this one occasion, which she hoped would only be the start of something more-was more revitalizing than the cheap thrills of a cookie-cutter shallow, superficial romance, where the top priority was how beautiful a person was on the outside.

We don't need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have mastered is the occasional capacity to acknowledge with good grace that we may, in one or two areas, be somewhat insane.

Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.