I take the world very personally. I take history personally; I want to place myself in the larger context.

What thrills me about trains is not their size or their equipment but the fact that they are moving, that they embody a connection between unseen places.

I was a very, very old child. Sometimes you meet a child who seems more like an adult. I think I was that type of child because I had a nearly fatal kidney disease when I was 9 years old.

You think you know someone by looking at his face but what can one face say about the thousand thoughts behind those eyes.

I don't remember being a child, and that's why I think I'm so child-like now in my unending curiosity and approach to life.

I think what you can’t see is always what you should be frightened of.

I write on a visual canvas, 'seeing' a scene in my thoughts before translating it into language, so I'm a visual junkie.

Asking anyone what she or he is reading is a necessary part of conversation, exchanging news. So I take recommendations from friends - and I always pass along a book I've loved.

...to make art is to realize another's sadness within, realize the hidden sadness in other people's lives, to feel sad with and for a stranger.

I'm fascinated by the narrative of geology, and I'm a veritable pack rat of a collector on the road. I keep a rock hammer in my car.

Because music is a language unto itself, when I'm writing, I need silence. I need to hear the music and the rhythms of the words inside my thoughts.

I'd far rather leave a thought behind me than a child. Other people can have children.

Oh, let us lose our milk teeth and cut instead the strong teeth of hate and love.

My fingers always seem busier than my mind.

I think that marriage is beautiful. And if it's a partnership with someone you love, then it really is beautiful. Yeah, I think that marriage does work.

I enjoyed the fans thoroughly, and they were always helpful. They were the reason that I tried so hard over the years.

Let us celebrate the soil. Most men toil that they may own a piece of it; they measure their success in life by their ability to buy it.

Don't censor incoming data through denial.

I surround people in unconditional acceptance and love to such a degree that everything that is unloving about them rises to the surface.

I'm funny how, I mean funny like I'm a clown?

Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.