If I'm hanging around too much, my wife and kids say, 'Hey, why don't you go downstairs and start a new novel?'

I want to write songs that are so sad, the kind of sad where you take someone's little finger and break it in three places.

Love is a state that I would like to exist in continuously.

An artist's duty is rather to stay open-minded and in a state where he can receive information and inspiration. You always have to be ready for that little artistic Epiphany.

I can control the weather with my moods. I just can’t control my moods.

Kylie Minogue is the greatest thing that has happened to Australian music.

It's a wonderful life if you can find it.

He who seeks, finds, and who knocks, will be let in.

All of our days are numbered. We cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all, because the worth of an idea never becomes apparent until you do it.

But if you're gonna dine with them cannibals Sooner or later, darling, you're gonna get eaten . . .

The artistic process seems to be mythologized quite a lot into something far greater than it actually is. It is just hard labor.

Great minds with great ideas usually share in the midst of their persecution

We are not built for mediocrity, but we build it into our lives nonetheless.

In greatness, life and death merge.

If the wishes came true, they came true in terrible ways. Wishes were dangerous things. That was the idea you got from fairy tales.

It's raining outside. How did you get here? And how did you get to be twenty-eight?

All human life is here, but the Holy Ghost seems to be somewhere else.

Everything I wrote about wasn't about me, but about the people listening.

Fiction writing feels more honest to me.

Starving for a high, a place to hang out inside my own head. Starving for touch. Pain, even. A way to feel. I need to feel.

Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.