“And why don't you write? Write! Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it. I know why you haven't written. (And why I didn't write before the age of twenty-seven.) Because writing is at once too high, too great for you, it's reserved for the great-that is for "great men"; and it's "silly."
Besides, you've written a little, but in secret. And it wasn't good, because it was in secret, and because you punished yourself for writing, because you didn't go all the way, or because you wrote, irresistibly, as when we would masturbate in secret, not to go further, but to attenuate the tension a bit, just enough to take the edge off. And then as soon as we come, we go and make ourselves feel guilty-so as to be forgiven; or to forget, to bury it until the next time.”
Source: The Laugh of the Medusa
“Take off my clothes and there becomes a man. Take off my skin and there becomes my bones. Break all my bones and there becomes my heart. Smash my heart and there becomes my soul. And that you cannot take. And what is my soul?...It is everything that make a man. It is everything that makes this man.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“While all the universe and my family are still sleeping, I will walk among the red and blue twinkle-lights of the living room, to sit and gaze upon the pretty white angel atop the tree and say silent prayers, remembering what was good in the world and why I was brought here to remember.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Teach them what you love to do in life. It really doesn't matter what it is. It never does. Just show them how important a passion is . . .”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“You might want more time in your life to attempt the things you like to do, and not just perform the things you have to do.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Do not give a damn what "they" have to say (and you will know who they are) for you are either very right or very wrong, but at least you are very something.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“So, if the truest currency of life is time, then how do you get more time? Because if more is merrier, than having more time should make us more happier. Right? Therefore, all we have to ask ourselves is can we buy more time? . . .”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“I want to remember warming your two a.m. bottle, clipping your locks, watching you be baptized, bathing you in the big porcelain sink… how I often laid you against my chest and felt the cradlesong of your tiny breaths as you fell asleep . . .”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“A good man lives for the joy in life and the happiness of being alive, not shackled to the wants of the future or the regrets of the past.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Don’t listen to the ramblings of fools,” he said, smiling grimly. “When it comes down to it, if they knew the truth, no one would want to live on this earth forever.”
Source: Corcitura