There are two conversations going on at the same time: the story and a conversation about how the story is being told.

I like a good story and I also like staring at the sea-- do I have to choose between the two?

You might say that the universe plays the blues.

The online music magazine Pitchfork once wrote that I would collaborate with anyone for a bag of Doritos.

Any kid will tell you that, yes, their music is both an escape and a survival mechanism, and that sometimes the music givesbthem hope and inspiration. It doesn't just placate and pacify.

There's a good chance that you might be inspired by ideas that originate outside of yourself.

The radio was shouting at you, pleading with you, and seducing you.

Powerpoint presentations are a kind of theater, a kind of augmented stand-up. Too often it's a boring and tedious genre, and audiences are subjected to the bad as well as the good.

I know what it's like to sleep in fear, to starve myself to be worthy, to be ashamed of my voice, to want to sleep forever. To question why I deserve to live.

Bad luck is when opportunity is in parallel lines with your preparation and action.

Anger is one of the sinews of the soul.

The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others.

All safe deposit boxes in banks or financial institutions have been sealed... and may only be opened in the presence of an agent of the I.R.S.

I once asked Barbara Stanwyck the secret of acting. She said: 'Just be truthful - and if you can fake that, you've got it made'.

I must play my role, great or small - that is humility, without self-importance, without self-indulgence.

I don't write about anything I don't love even if that love sometimes gets all screwed up and tormented.

The flesh of past lovers looks both familiar and strange.

I decide to do what I always do when I'm not sure what's going on: I act like everyone else.