Birds were like dinosaurs' better selves. They had short lives and long summers. We all should be so lucky as to leave behind such heirs.

I guess my life hasn’t always been happy, or easy, or exactly what I want. At a certain point, I just have to try not to think too much about certain things, or else they’ll break my heart.

Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude.

It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.

Integrity's a neutral value. Hyenas have integrity, too. They're pure hyena.

Nice people don't necessarily fall in love with nice people.

The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage.

The Mekons were kind of like the background music of my life.

Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular.

Reading enables me to maintain a sense of something substantive– my ethical integrity, my intellectual integrity.

Fiction is a particularly effective way for strangers to connect across time and distance

While you're here, work hard, work smart, and keep an open mind...

When people violate your values, they have excuses for doing so. For instance, they may misconceive your quest for responsiveness as being annoying...

I believe in living today. Not in yesterday, nor in tomorrow.

As far as arrangements after the basic track is cut, if I'm writing a horn arrangement or playing strings, I might arrange that, plan that out. Other times, I'll just sit and roll tape.

Remember the movements that don't look like moving.

Getting back into the action genre is like going back home. It's great.

He has the vocal modulation of a railway-station announcer, the expressive power of a fence-post and the charisma of a week-old head of lettuce.

People say I'm America's worst nightmare. I say I'm the American dream.

I’ll walk forever with stories inside me that the people I love the most can never hear.

For those of you who like to scarf your popcorn in the sack, the good news is that Newman's Own contains an aphrodisiac.