My ignorance is essential. I do not write what I know but what I need to know.

People understand contests. You take a bunch of kids throwing rocks at random and people look askance, but if you go and hold a rock-throwing contest - people understand that.

Process can not be inferred from product any more than a pig can be inferred from a sausage.

I write every day for two hours. But it's what I do for the other twenty-two hours that allows me to write.

The flow of writing is always a surprise and a challenge. Click the computer on and I am 17 again, wanting to write and not knowing if I can.

I always like to see if the art across the street is better than mine.

Our most intimate contact with civilizations long since dust has been through the art which has survived them.

It's dangerous to buy into praise and criticism for what you do when you're trying to present your music to people. I don't ignore it completely, but I don't dwell on it too much.

People refuse to believe that I've never been to Starbucks or Disneyland.

I did with my wife a comic book for the Raynham Hall Museum in Long Island. They sell the book every single time a busload of kids comes in.

Visual presentation of our heritage in glass is needed.

I don't want to disappear.

It is clear that there would nothing a U.N. Security Council resolution that condemned Syria because Syria is Russia's ally, and Russia has a veto in the U.N. Security Council.

A villain always preferred luring the heroine to his lair.

The hardest part of playing the trumpet is the physical act of making the sound.