Pete thinks we all have a blacking factory: some awful moment, early on, when we surrender our childish hearts as surely as we lose our baby teeth.

I couldn't write—or wouldn't write, at any rate—unable to face the grueling self-scrutiny that fiction demands

It tastes like water spiked with strange.

Confident is the grace of courage.

Breakfast is everything. The beginning, the first thing. It is the mouthful that is the commitment to a new day, a continuing life.

Once, a union job at GM or AT&T was a bridge to success. Now, a nonunion Wal-Mart job is a bridge to nowhere.

Most of my recorded material has been in small group configurations. I have not released large orchestral works as recordings because it hasn't been within the realm of possibility.

The money footballers earn today is incredulous

The trouble with good advice is that it usually interferes with our plans.

I think that everything should be a stepping stone for something bigger and better and if there is something bigger then why not go on after it?

I do tend to take time off. A year and a half ago I went to film school, and before that I had taken years off at a time to be involved politically or this or that.

I really don’t want a compilation of sounds. I just need them to be songs.