You find when you're writing a detective story that you're actually not trying to solve anything. You're trying to stop the reader from solving the puzzle.

It's always surprised me that mainstream America had the good taste to like R.E.M. It doesn't have the digestible quality the general public tends to look for in its favorite musicians.

The first horror movie I saw, in first or second grade, was My Bloody Valentine [1981], where there's a deranged killer in a miner mask stalking a small coal town.

There's a structure to a detective story that I can easily understand. I understand playing that particular game. It's like solving a puzzle. Or creating a puzzle.

I was never afraid on stage. That's where I was the least afraid. I could just do what I do and I had the amplification and the lights.

When you create a fence, you keep people out, but you also limit your mobility.

I have always wanted to be either a cinematographer or a veterinarian.

I've never had a mentor. I've always wanted one. I'm actually really disappointed that nobody took my under their wing.

Looking back, [R.E.M.]videos, by in large, have always been art films. I'm thinking of "Losing My Religion." That's a landmark piece.

There is a value to moving more slowly through a story.

There's also something sexual about watching the nubile girl in terror. But you do take on her fear as your own.

Whoever is going to listen to the philosophers needs a considerable practice in listening.

As our country bled . . . its leader's wife came to this podium piously to call for a new human order, this when thousands of Filipinos were political prisoners.

I think best in a hot bath, with my head tilted back and my feet up high.

I don’t think you can really define love

The very essence of our civilization is that we give a paramount place to morality in all our affairs, public or private.

Nobody wants to watch perfection.

Patriotism is a salt against rottenness, a glorious spur to high endeavour; it recovers the half-obliterated virtue of loyalty, calls every man to service, and ennobles great and small alike.

Answer all the questions that I'm too afraid to ask

I love the sport of snowboarding so much, but I just don't want to talk about it, ever.

Freedom so often means that one isn't needed anywhere.