"Your fortune is misfortune if it is not Love."

“My school music teacher, Al Bennest, introduced me to jazz by playing Louis Armstrong's record of "West End Blues" for me. I found more jazz on the radio, and began looking for records. My paper route money, and later, money I earned working after school in a print shop and a butcher shop went toward buying jazz records. I taught myself the alto saxophone and the drums in order to play in my high school dance band.”

“If I have a huge audience, I'd like a bigger audience; maybe slightly a slightly more illustrious audience.”

“I run with heart and determination, and that's what you can't measure-heart.”

“I write with a Uni-Ball Onyx Micropoint on nine-by-seven bound notebooks made by a Canadian company called Blueline. After I do a few drafts, I type up the poem on a Macintosh G3 and then send it out the door.”

“You know what’s better than building things up in your imagination? Building things up in real life.”

“So it is that the gods do not give all men gifts of grace - neither good looks nor intelligence nor eloquence.”

“One and all We lend an ear-nay, Science takes thereto- Encourages the meanest who has racked Nature until he gains from her some fact, To state what truth is from his point of view, Mere pin-point though it be: since many such Conduce to make a whole, she bids our friend Come forward unabashed and haply lend His little life-experience to our much Of modern knowledge.”

“You've got to spend a little money to make a little money.”