Death is not soft-mouthed, vague-footed, nearby. It is in the hall.

God is an immensity, while this disease, this death, which is in me, this small, tightly defined pedestrian event, is merely and perfectly real, without miracle—or instruction.

I look upon another's insistence on the merits of his or her life - duties, intellect, accomplishment - and see that most of it is nonsense.

It is like visiting one's funeral, like visiting loss in its purest and most monumental form, this wild darkness, which is not only unknown but which one cannot enter as oneself.

Memory, so complete and clear or so evasive, has to be ended, has to be put aside, as if one were leaving a chapel and bringing the prayer to an end in one's head.

I am in an adolescence in reverse, as mysterious as the first, except that this time I feel it as a decay of the odds that I might live for a while, that I can sleep it off.

Public radio is alive and kicking, it always has been

Death and I are head to head in a total collision, pure and mutual distaste.

Being ill like this combines shock - this time I will die - with a pain and agony that are unfamiliar, that wrench me out of myself.

True stories, autobiographical stories, like some novels, begin long ago, before the acts in the account, before the birth of some of the people in the tale.

I feel sorry for the man who marries you... because everyone thinks you're sweet and you're not.

I don't need jewels and cars. It's about the delicacy of the way I'm handled.

When you're working, you have so many people working around you and being involved. It can get a bit overwhelming. I've just gotten used to it.

All the problems of the world - child labor, corruption - are symptoms of a spiritual disease: lack of compassion.

My New Years Resolution is to find the calm in the chaos. Practicing yoga is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. It's where you connect mind, body and spirit.

Don't praise your own good shots. Leave that function to your partner who, if a good sport, will not be slow in performing it.

He that has given today may, if he so please, take away tomorrow.

Did any artist ever bring more pure joy to more people than Fred Astaire?

I grew up Jewish. I am Jewish. I went to an Episcopal high school. I went to a Baptist college. I've taken every comparative-religion course that was available. God? I have no idea.

We actually slander and dishonor God by our very eagerness to serve Him without knowing Him.

Any artist must expect to work amid the total, rational indifference of everybody else to their work, for years, perhaps for life.