The fallout from slavery is ongoing. I am not sure the issue of race in America will ever be completely solved.

A monster is a person who has stopped pretending.

It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect.

You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.

Memory is the most malicious cutter of all, preserving, recasting, panning in slow motion across the awful bits so that we retain every detail.

In other words, fiction is payback for those who have wronged you.

We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them.

What isn't said is as important as what is said.

Sanctimony and self-regard are as American as smallpox blankets and supersize meals.

A society manufactures the heroes it requires.

Google "brooklyn writer" and you'll get, Did you mean: the future of literature as we know it?

Stories are what death thinks he puts an end to. He can't understand that they end in him, but they don't end with him.

Maturing is realizing how many things don’t require your comment.

It [gaming] is the child of avarice the brother of iniquity and the father of mischief.

But I think it's hard for me to only put out one record a year. Because I get too antsy. But it's good I'm learning to do that, because each record counts. And you should make it count.

[The economic crisis ] gave people the option to put money into private accounts.

College is expensive; I always knew that, and I wanted to make money, partially to spend a little of it here and there, but primarily for a college savings fund.

I came back to my original wife. I came back to her after I made a few boo-boos in my life. Coming back to her was good for me, good for her and good for the children.

All my film ideas and subjects have come from photography.

I just start singing some words with a tune. I don't ever write a song thinking, Now I'll write a song about... .

Damn right I like the life I live, Cause I went from negative to positive.