Perhaps Bug and Tony should have been allies. But any successful structure of domination always gets the weak to reject each other.

Maybe life is a process of trading hopes for memories.

Can you understand your own dreams, which arise with mushrooms' rank richness in the night-forests within your skull?

Death is ordinary. Behold it, subtract its patterns and lessons from those of the death that weapons bring, and maybe the residue will show what violence is.

Just for the hell of it, try to love someone as unlike you as possible.

When I go train hopping and I look up into the sky, there are always so many more stars than I remember there were.

Death cannot be experienced either by the dead or the living.

The instant people specialize, its in their interest to dehumanize the people their specialized function operates upon.

[Ernest ]Hemingway always said, "Write about what you know." I think you can do that, and if you want to write about what you don't know, you can. It just takes a lot more work.

At least I hope - that the fiction I've written so far has flaws but has mostly been successful.

I feel like I'm almost ready to write fiction about the border. But even after 10 years of writing nonfiction about it, I don't think I know quite enough to do it right.

Brace for the worst, hope for the best

Your pain is your own until you put it to music, then it belongs to everyone. You'll find it lightens the load.

You are wonderful sacred-soul.

Her father kneels and unclasps the urn. Above the waves she falls graceful as snow, my sister, my Sonora.

This is a business. Be smart. Choose wisely.

You can't really live until you are no longer afraid to die.

Every newspaper editor says the heart of the paper is the reporter - which is true - except for the pay!

I get twitchy if I don't pick up a guitar or sit at the piano every now and then... I have to do it; I don't have a choice.

It's a sensible rule that says before you get a mortgage it should be checked whether you can afford it.

Two negatives don't make a positive, any more than two half-wits make a wit.