With the guitar I've suffered a great deal, but when I've had a good time, the suffering seemed worthwhile.

The hands find a way to do what the heart wants to say

If you lack technique you lose the freedom to create.

I didn't study music. I literally lived it.

You can get all A's and still flunk life.

It all started with one of those days--one of those muggy, first-of-the-summer-vacation days when everyone older and everyone younger knew what to do, but everyone in between was lost.

Truth doesn't hurt. It is only pride that hurts after hearing the truth.

I don't believe we have a professional self Monday through Friday and a real self the rest of the time. It is all professional, and it is all personal.

I've never had a treehouse because I live in New York City. It would be a little bit hard to fit a treehouse in a New York City apartment.

I can live with losing, I can't live without taking my chance.

We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.

All of us are pilgrims on this earth. I've even heard people say that the earth itself is a pilgrim in the heavens.

Being a writer is an endless study in human transition and lessons learned or forgotten or misapplied.

One of the things [fiction] does is lead you to recognize what you did not know before.