“On a whim, he stopped and bought a watch from a sidewalk vendor. Norma...” — Jim Carroll Quote

“On a whim, he stopped and bought a watch from a sidewalk vendor. Normally, Billy could not abide keeping time, especially when it was attached to one’s body. Time was like a relentlessly needy lapdog one had to haul around. It barked too much and had no sense of loyalty.”

“I should have stayed an athlete, body well-tuned, cruising around with my accountant in a Porsche, maroon and chrome.”

“Poetry can unleash a terrible fear. I suppose it is the fear of possibilities, too many possibilities, each with its own endless set of variations. It's like looking too closely and too long into a mirror; soon your features distort, then erupt. You look too closely into your poems, or listen too closely to them as they arrive in whispers, and the features inside you - call it heart, call it mind, call it soul - accelerate out of control. They distort and they erupt, and it is one strange pain. You realize, then, that you can't attempt breaking down too many barriers in too short a time, because there are as many horrors waiting to get in at you as there are parts of yourself pushing to break out, and with the same, or more, fevered determination.”

“Time cannot fully be perceived without shadows to reveal the passage of time from the sun projecting on Earth nor without a clock dial ticking nor without some type of perceivable movement. If all movement in the entire universe stopped simultaneously, most people would argue that time itself has also stopped. The famous pausing time element used in popular movies and shows is often depicted as all movement ceasing to occur. Therefore, it does not seem that time can be fully experienced without movement. Movement is the context required to understand what time is.”

“Money isn’t the most precious of all resources. Time is. Those who have a lot of it to spare on themselves are the richest. Those who have a lot of it to spend on others are the kindest.”