People get addicted to feeling offended all the time because it gives them a high

You are...beyond my imagination. It's a wonder you can be touched at all.

I hated being a novelist when I was 20 - I had nothing to write about.

Nevertheless, one learned very early that books had to be respected; they were all putative Bibles and to some small degree had a share in holiness.

The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact.

Do good things for other people.

My main influences are pop and folk music - Bob Lind, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, the Motown collection, The Zombies, Elliott Smith, and a ton of 70's AM radio hits. I love powerpop too.

It's up to us to save the world for tomorrow: it's up to you and me.

Because beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. It's the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you can see both their beauty and their death.

Never leave the site of a strong idea without doing something to execute around it.

A lot of songs are derivative of each other.