I do think there's something when you have an unbroken day, and it feels like you and your attention can just be together like birds again and you can actually think and dream a little.

The beginning of the end can feel a lot like the middle when you are living in it.

When you're a kid, it's hard to tell the innocuous secrets from the ones that will kill you if you keep them.

Fiction helps me to reconnect with the true, deep weirdness inherent in everyday reality, in our dealings with one another, in just being alive.

It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity.

My older sister has entire kingdoms inside of her, and some of them are only accessible at certain seasons, in certain kinds of weather.

I spent most of my 20s with these alligator wrestlers in the swamps of South Florida.

It is a special kind of homelessness to be evicted from your dreams.

Self-disciplin e is necessary, but so is playfulness, flexibility, joy. When you stop demanding perfection of yourself, your writing desk will become a spacious place.

There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction.

You small mortals don't realize the power of your stories.

The future you have, tomorrow, won't be the same future you had, yesterday.

On stage I make love to twenty-five thousand people then I go home alone.

Sympathy is the charm of human life.

As a New Yorker, this is what you do: you confront, jab, and slap, sometimes wrongly, then smile and forget about it.

In Pierre Trudeau, Canada has finally produced a Prime Minister worthy of assassination.

I think that as the guardian of justice elected by the people it's our duty to use whatever forms of force, police, army, to make sure that at least the freedom of choice is preserved.

Temperance is a bridle of gold; he, who uses it rightly, is more like a god than a man.

Sometimes I'm extremely afraid of the unknown, but I'm so grateful to be on that journey.

Don't save the canary. Fix the coal mine.

My dad is adorably optimistic, positive, pie-in-the-sky. He thinks every new song I write is my best. He sells T-shirts at my merchandise stands and hands out guitar picks to fans.