I never thought I would write an autobiography, probably because my first novel, Go Now, is really all drawn from my life, even though it's more about the psychology going on.

we still have the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building and the Woolworth Building, but it just seems like part of the nature of New York, that it's always shifting.

Things always change, and New York teaches you that.

Another thing that's good about writing to describe a situation or a state of consciousness is that you can finally get it right. That was my intention, and that's always interesting.

The purpose of rock n' roll is to convince girls to pay money to get close to you.

In fact I thought life was pretty much a losing proposition, and I didn't mind saying so.

I'm usually alone or asleep, at home.

I do everything halfway, a thing of which adults disapprove, but things done halfway are deceptive, and in a class of their own – for instance, the sun is really twice its size.

A memoir takes some particular threads, some incidents, some experience from a person's life and gives an account of it.

I shake my head and the tiny acrobats fall like spangles, like the cool rain on another planet, down to the inside of my feet.

I felt just overwhelmed by input: the Vietnam War and the collapse of the '60s and the proliferation of media' it just felt like everything was too much to handle and you just tuned out.

With gentleness, you will calm every aggressive action.

Enron would keep its unearned windfall, generated solely because David Duncan didn't know what he was doing.

I've had a very good career and I'm grateful that the public has had some level of acceptance and appreciation of my work.

I think as a music listener you have your rock and roll dreams. I personally wouldn't want to apply that necessarily, mainly because I love music too much to mess it up.

There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.

If God grants me longer life, I will see to it that no peasant in my kingdom will lack the means to have a chicken in the pot every Sunday.

If the President asked you to help, I don't think anybody could refuse, unless one felt that one couldn't be effective.

Distance either of time or place is sufficient to reconcile weak minds to wonderful relations.

Nobody ever died of discomfort, yet living in the name of comfort has killed more ideas, more opportunities, more actions, and more growth than everything else combined. Comfort kills!