Nick Flynn

On a good day I write, all day.

— Nick Flynn

I believe poetry has very little to do with memory.

— Nick Flynn

inside us, a flower taken whole, a field built inside.

— Nick Flynn

In life you get one take, and it's perfect.

— Nick Flynn

You come to realize people are not simple.

— Nick Flynn

The attention one gets from being a poet isn't great.

— Nick Flynn

“I’m fast becoming the one who leaves things behind,”

— Nick Flynn

“I know cigarettes can kill & wonder why she wants to die.”

— Nick Flynn

I can weep pretty easily. I can get tears in my eyes from a beautiful work of art.

— Nick Flynn

Who doesn't want to just disappear, at some point in the day, in a year, to just step off the map and…

— Nick Flynn

To be honest, in my five years as an electrician, I never got the license.

— Nick Flynn

“And though he knew it was only the whiskey talking, he also knew that the whiskey talked daily.”

— Nick Flynn

I get inspired by my friends, and if a friend is a writer, that is even deeper.

— Nick Flynn

Everything we do, I'd imagine, influences everything we will do.

— Nick Flynn

“His impunity thrills me, I mistake it for fearlessness, though years later he will admit to being afraid all the time.”

— Nick Flynn

Change is one of the only constants in Buddhism; as meditation became the way I breathed in the days, this became apparent.

— Nick Flynn

By the time I'm nine I know the world is a dangerous place. I've heard whispers about razorblades in apples, about Charlie…

— Nick Flynn

Here's a secret: Everyone, if they live long enough, will lose their way at some point. You will lose your way; you…

— Nick Flynn

“Not a formidable presence, except in that madman way that drunks wield, that does-it-look-like-I-give-a-fuck-about-anything?”

— Nick Flynn

“You know the way Jesus rips open his shirt to show us his heart, all flaming and thorny, the way he points…

— Nick Flynn

Certain stories we carry with us, events in our life, they define who we are. It's not a matter of getting over…

— Nick Flynn

The only strategy I know of is to write every day, which I don't always do, because sometimes I just can't, for…

— Nick Flynn

“I’m riding beside my best friend, and I tell him, in the same offhand tone my mother had used, That’s my grandfather’s…

— Nick Flynn

Trinity Park lies directly across from the library, Trinity Church rising like a midieval thought amidst the glass and steel towers.

— Nick Flynn

I offer Emily half of my hit of acid- Love Saves the Day. It's my second or third time tripping, Emily's first,…

— Nick Flynn

“note: The phrase Son of God had many meanings in Jesus' time, one of which was "a son born without a father,"…

— Nick Flynn

“If not for the rats you could crawl beneath a bush. A bush. A bench. The alliterative universe. Rats too can pass…

— Nick Flynn

For the first few months, I was a comically inept parent. The first night home from the hospital, I held her bare…

— Nick Flynn

Writers, especially poets, are particularly prone to madness. There exists a striking association between creativity and manic depression. Why are more creative…

— Nick Flynn

“Everything he did, as long as you stayed in the village, whether shouting obscenities at passing children or sleeping in the cemetery,…

— Nick Flynn

My father had always identified himself as a writer to my mother when they met. When they met, he was writing this…

— Nick Flynn

I had to steel myself against this psychic devastation - to see your father on the street. It's hard enough to pick…

— Nick Flynn

“Some mornings you wake up fully in your body, and you know this is all there is--the air, the shape your body…

— Nick Flynn

“Here's a secret: Everyone, if they live long enough, will lose their way at some point. You will lose your way, you…

— Nick Flynn

“The South African artist William Kentridge speaks to this type of certainty: 'To say that one needs art, or politics, that incorporate…

— Nick Flynn

If it had been a heart attack, the newspapermight have used the word massive,as if a mountain range had openedinside her, but…

— Nick Flynn

“[excerpt] The usual I say. Essence. Spirit. Medicine. A taste. I say top shelf. Straight up. A shot. A sip. A nip.…

— Nick Flynn

“(2002) In Rome, month upon month, I struggled with how to structure the book about my father (He already had the water,…

— Nick Flynn

“If it had been a heart attack, the newspaper might have used the word massive , as if a mountain range had…

— Nick Flynn

Sometimes I'd see my father, walking past my building on his way to another nowhere. I could have given him a key,…

— Nick Flynn