Washington D.C.! Congress is full of self-declared outsiders.

When I look at my old pictures, all I can see is what I used to be but am no longer. I think: What I can see is what I am not.

Home is where somebody notices when you are no longer there.

The perfect borscht is what life should be but never is.

Belief and delusion are incestuous siblings.

I am itching to criticize some well-regarded writers' works, but I am not doing it because I am perfectly aware that my critique could easily be reduced to envy or just plain meanness.

I gradually became aware that my interiority was inseparable from my exteriority, that the geography of my city was the geography of my soul.

I much preferred winning to thinking and I didn't like losing at all.

You don't want your neurosurgeon to have doubts about the meaning of it all while he or she is operating on your brain.

If you can't go home, there is nowhere to go, and nowhere is the biggest place in the world-indeed, nowhere is the world.

We knew - but didn't want to know - what was going to happen, the sky descending upon our heads like the shadow of a falling piano in a cartoon.

I want to thank you, Lord, for life and all that's in it. Thank you for the day and for the hour, and the minute.

Believe in the magic that's in you, its potential, what it can achieve. But most of all believe in yourself and create a world where dreams become reality.

One certainty when you travel is the moment you arrive in a foreign country the American dollar will fall like a stone.

Surprise keeps the reader awake. The only alternative is to continue saying what the reader is expecting. What fun is that?

A man doesn't cry. In my life, I've never cried. I cannot do it. I am a man. How will I cry?

The most consistent musical experience I had growing up was church music.

No one in America fully understands the constantly changing Internal Revenue Code. Agents of the IRS do not, judges do not, congressmen do not, and most assuredly taxpayers do not.

Music crosses cultures and language barriers and it makes people feel good.

Late children are early orphans.

You don't want to disappoint. Especially someone like me who's been out of music for years and hasn't had an album in like, four years.