Lord, why did you leave me in these woods?

When I look at my old pictures, all I can see is what I used to be but am no longer. I think: What I can see is what I am not.

Home is where somebody notices when you are no longer there.

The perfect borscht is what life should be but never is.

Belief and delusion are incestuous siblings.

I am itching to criticize some well-regarded writers' works, but I am not doing it because I am perfectly aware that my critique could easily be reduced to envy or just plain meanness.

I gradually became aware that my interiority was inseparable from my exteriority, that the geography of my city was the geography of my soul.

I much preferred winning to thinking and I didn't like losing at all.

You don't want your neurosurgeon to have doubts about the meaning of it all while he or she is operating on your brain.

If you can't go home, there is nowhere to go, and nowhere is the biggest place in the world-indeed, nowhere is the world.

We knew - but didn't want to know - what was going to happen, the sky descending upon our heads like the shadow of a falling piano in a cartoon.

Success is a process, not an event.

Family is in essence a small nation, and the nation a large family. In treating his own family with dignity, a ruler learns to govern his nation with dignity

You'll have time to rest when you're dead.

Thy praise or dispraise is to me alike; One doth not stroke me, nor the other strike.

You must find the right voice (or voices) for the timbre that can convince a reader to give himself up to you.

This is the way I've always thought it should be. We've always blamed ourselves, but I guess we know what cylinder wasn't firing!

My hell is going to be the stairmaster wing of Dante's inferno, where they're gonna tape my feet to the pedals and the only music I get is Michael Bolton karaoke style.

I don't like to say, "Oh, I don't like this kind of music." I like to listen to it and try to see what people who like it get out of it.

What I do as a songwriter is a constant force in my life, that I'm grateful to have.

Our freedom is our sacred cow; no one should touch it! We must be very pious in this holy matter.