It was both true, and not the complete truth, like so much of his talk.

Miles was no musician, but even he could sense an intensity of passion in the playing that went beyond talent, reaching for genius.

Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid.

He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on professional matters, then promptly stop in his tracks to peer inquisitively into his guest's eyes for signs of boredom or mockery, being intelligent enough to be unable fully to believe in his own claims to significance. He might, in a past life, have been a particularly canny and sharp-tongued royal advisor.

His whole personality was like an elaborate joke that he never stopped telling.

He was never quite certain what he thought about anything until he had tested his opinion for seaworthiness in the course of some polemical storm.

There are parts of his life and personality that are extremely messy, and that's the truth

Anyone moderately familiar with the rigours of composition will not need to be told the story in detail; how he wrote and it seemed good; read and it seemed vile; corrected and tore up; cut out; put in; was in ecstasy; in despair; had his good nights and bad mornings; snatched at ideas and lost them; saw his book plain before him and it vanished; acted people's parts as he ate; mouthed them as he walked; now cried; now laughed; vacillated between this style and that; now preferred the heroic and pompous; next the plain and simple; now the vales of Tempe; then the fields of Kent or Cornwall; and could not decide whether he was the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world.

Pure literature seemed beyond his scope, yet he was constantly endeavouring to express himself.

It might have meant something, or it might not have. That was the thing about uncertainty, you were never sure.

Bill [Monroe], in some ways, he was very inarticulate about his feelings. In other ways, he was very profound about his feelings. And when you got him into a certain mood where he was being more introspective, he really could be very profound, I felt.

The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only when he speaks somewhat wildly.

And William laughed with his special blend of mischief, compounded of humor, spite, and sadness in a ratio even he wasn't sure of but that he mixed by feel.

All day long he was docile, intelligent, good, Though sometimes changing to a darker mood. He seemed hypocritical, could tell better lies, in the dark he saw dots of colors behind closed eyes, clenched fists, put his tongue out at his elder brother.