I was listening to this record by Paul Desmond called First Place Again. It's incredibly gorgeous. There is nothing better that you would want to get from music than you get from that record.

I like to carry around extremely pretentious books, and I don't know if I can read them, but if I hold them near me, it imbues me with a sense of powerful intelligence.

I am a complete jazz nerd.

When I do older folk songs, I'm not doing them because they're old. I have no interest in reviving or continuing a tradition. I'm just doing them because they're great songs.

Guitar comes more out of its limitations for me, like putting it in a weird tuning and then just go places.

If I pick up a fiddle, I don't compose on it, so much as I just play whatever.

I'm not really a folk singer, but I love the music and there's certain lines that will get just stuck in my head, and they seem to be stuck there for a reason, and I start singing them.

Reading books is fantastic. I didn't do it until ten years ago. It's great.

Hurt me back when I hurt you and I would always love you for it.

Insecurity was never humility

Politics is like air and water. And you know if there is bad politics. Everyone is polluted. Everyone is unhealthy. See the people walking on the street: how they act.

The more prose I wrote, the more the pendulum swung back toward the middle, merging some poetic sensibilities with the more fundamental elements of creative prose.

It's time for the US to widen its circle of learning, not to circle its wagons against hostile ideas in education reform.

Great men should think of opportunity and not of time. That is the excuse of feeble and puzzled spirits.

I had no interest in being your basic vanilla girl. I've been lucky enough that I haven't had to play that.

The Friend asks no return but that his Friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other's hopes. They are kind to each other's dreams.

Monopoly power is an illusion in any system in which free competition is allowed.

Reynie's fce fell. 'It's not funny, Kate.' For a moment - a fleeting moment - Kate looked desperately sad. 'Well, of course it's not funny, Reynie Muldoon. But what do you want me to do? Cry?