My guess is that he remembers some of me, some of us together, and the rest rolled off him like topsoil in a flash flood.

The problem is simply finding the right person. Ask Plato. Just make sure she finishes your thoughts and you finish hers. That's all you need.

I believe in walking out of a museum before the paintings you've seen begin to run together. How else can you carry anything away with you in your mind's eye?

Faith is simply whatever is real to us.

And how could anyone consent to give up the smell of open books, old or new?

In the end, I always act from the heart, even if I also value reason and tradition. I wish I could explain why, but I don't know.

-Do you think artists are supposed to be happy? -Everyone is supposed to be. -I said staunchly, and I knew that I was indeed an idiot and that was my destiny and I didn't mind it

It’s the silence that scares me. It’s the blank page on which I can write my own fears.

You can't hate your best friend for taking opportunities he'd been given. That would be the worst sort of hate, wouldn't it? Because it would mean you hate yourself, too.

He's lost his colour very far from here, Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry

Your tone of voice can be conveyed in both the words you speak and in the words you write.

I thought: This is not racing, it's a suicide mission.

People look with sympathetic eyes only at the blossom and the fruit, and disregard the long period of transition during which the one is ripening into the other.

I don't read music or anything, so when I produce, I go basically by ear.

First I was a mimic. Practically from the moment I began talking, I did impersonations of the people in my neighborhood - the storekeepers, the policemen, my teachers.

I have all this time between projects, and I'm not so sure that's a healthy thing. It's scary, because at 36 I'm woefully unqualified for anything else.

I've often said that there's no such thing as writer's block, the problem is idea block