I have a second-degree black belt in Okinawan kobudo weapons training.

Donkeys are the most misunderstood and abused animals around the world.

I think by writing about a place with great specificity, you manage to make it universal.

I worked probably fewer jobs than most people, or fewer real soul-killing jobs than other people. I've been a typist, a typesetter, a keyliner, cappuccino-maker. I think I've been pretty lucky.

My donkeys are Jack and Don Quixote. They're very smart, very cautious. Much of what people consider stubbornness in donkeys is actually cautiousness.

As a writer, I can live somewhat independently, occupying nooks and crannies and finding meaning there. I can even live in my mind a good portion of most days.

A mathematical proof is beautiful, but when you're finished, it's really only about one thing. A story can be about many things.

That's where I live, a junkyard in a neighborhood of junkyards. We have three tractors from the 1940s and '50s, several old pickup trucks, and a pile of scrap metal.

Time is never wasted coming to an old man bar.

I grew up with donkeys, as well as horses, but I'm more interested in donkeys.

Where I live you're not supposed to shoot a firearm within a quarter mile of a dwelling.

[Rylie:] I was thinking about that short you directed--The Pier. I wondered if you had a video or a reel of it somewhere. [Finn:] You want to see my short. Why?[Rylie:] Color me curious.

A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.

Our senses are always part of the process.

Then, when I had the opportunity to go to Africa and visit the villages, I heard the real, raw, true rhythms and realised the origins of the old Negro spirituals I grew up with in the South.

You have all these people in the press who are ringing their hands over fake news stories. That actually became the narratives for critics.

I just want to put some positive stuff out there. If it works, great. If it doesn't, no problem.

I like to get everything done during the early morning hours and the early part of the day.

Social Security is a tax.

I graduated from CUNY College of Staten Island with a 3.9 GPA in three and a half years.

Come let us mock at the great That had such burdens on the mind And toiled so hard and late To leave some monument behind, Nor thought of the leveling wind.