Where radio is different than fiction is that even mediocre fiction needs purpose, a driving question.

It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.

The most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work.

We're Jews, my family, and Jews break down into two distinct subcultures: book Jews and money Jews. We were money Jews.

Not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap.

You can criticize yourself to a point to do something better, or you criticize yourself to a point where you inhibit yourself.

Great stories happen to those who can tell them.

We live in a world where joy and empathy and pleasure are all around us, there for the noticing.

It takes a while. It's gonna take you a while. It's normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through that.

You'd think that radio was around long enough that someone would have coined a word for staring into space.

It's not a terribly original thing to say, but I love Raymond Carver. For one thing, he's fun to read out loud.

I'm one of my sensations.

Feel the joy and love anyway, stress will melt away.

Many parents have discovered, perhaps with some guilt, that they can read a story to a child while thinking of something else.

Lips are the fingerprints of love.

I'm reading a book, because I'm brainy. No, it is a book - if you don't know, it is like a blog except bigger.

Many pleasant things are better when they belong to someone else. When things belong to others, we enjoy them twice as much, without the risk of losing them, and with the pleasure of novelty.

We cannot take the president off the hook for an illegal war that was based on lies.

There is a point at which the law becomes immoral and unethical. That point is reached when it becomes a cloak for the cowardice that dares not stand up against blatant violations of justice.

I guess I just have bigger ovaries.

I've never had to spend any time in the VA hospital, so I really can't speak for those guys.