If talk was money, you'd be a millionaire. If thoughts could kill, there'd be no one here.

You have to open your mind. I like the ability to express myself in a deep way. It's the closest music to our humanity - it's like a folk music that rises up out of a culture.

So I went out and bought Hard Again by Muddy Waters. That was a big learning curve. I listened to that album again and again and again. James Cotton was the harmonica player on that album.

In them days I just as soon died -- except for my harmonica. It was like a friend who didn't give a damn if I could see or not.

It's very easy to learn. And very difficult to master.

If you've got a good vibrato, you can get away with a lot.

A novel rough draft is like bread dough

During the Soviet era, private ownership was a crime punishable with up to five years in prison.

The most common mistakes women make when applying makeup are not applying it in the proper light and not using their hands as blending tools.

It's better to get along with Russia than not.

I'm too shy to express my sexual needs except over the phone to people I don't know.

He was still frowning at the cake, looking at it as if he expected it to sprout dozens of legs and begin scuttling toward him, thin-lipped, teeth bared.

I worked privately, and sometimes I feel that might be better for poets than the kind of social workshop gathering. My school was the great poets: I read, and I read, and I read.

It was considerably larger than a knife hilt.

We must persuade Iran not t have nuclear weapons through peaceful and diplomatic means. We want a peaceful planet.

Real life doesn't have to be convincing, but fiction does.