“There’s no need to wait for the bad things and bullshit to be over. Change now. Love now. Live now. Don’t wait for people to give you permission to live, because they won’t.”

“If a girl starts out all casual with a guy and she doesn’t tell him that she wants a relationship, it will never become a relationship. If you give the guy the impression that casual is okay with you, that’s all he’ll ever want. Be straight with him from the start. If he gets scared and runs away, he wasn’t right for you.”

“I’ve written some poetry I don’t understand myself”

“Opening up to the wrong person is like putting ammo in their hands.”

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside while still alive. Never surrender.”

“Sometimes in composition class, when I have been confronted by someone who simply cannot get the first word written on paper, I give the following advice: Say your essay into a tape recorder and then write it down.”

“I just can’t listen to any more Wagner, you know…I’m starting to get the urge to conquer Poland.”

“One thing I have come to realize is that love is not always happiness.”

“I cannot tell if what the world considers ‘happiness’ is happiness or not. All I know is that when I consider the way they go about attaining it, I see them carried away headlong, grim and obsessed, in the general onrush of the human herd, unable to stop themselves or to change their direction. All the while they claim to be just on the point of attaining happiness.”

“We shall know how to live better, if we read the Holy Bible.”

“You don’t have to be like anyone else. You just need to learn more about your own creative self and start blooming.”

“Be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.”

“Life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.”

“The blooming spring is the smile of the ever-joyful nature.”

“To know when to be generous and when firm—that is wisdom.”