I had tremendous fun fooling around with the way people talked about songs, just the way that became another way of understanding the world.

Words that in their everyday surrealism have no parallel in contemporary writing... Music that mines the deep veins of fatalism in the Appalachian voice

We make the oldest stories new when we succeed, and we are trapped by the old stories when we fail

Patriotism in America, as I understand it, is a matter of suffering, when the country fails to live up to its promises, or actively betrays them.

I want another idea, another project, but you can't make them up. They show up.

No failure in America, whether of love or money, is ever simple; it is always a kind of betrayal, of a mass of shadowy, shared hopes.

Every youth movement presents itself as a loan to the future, and tries to call in its lien in advance, but when there is no future all loans are canceled.

It may be that the most interesting American struggle is the struggle to set oneself free from the limits one is born to, and then to learn something of the value of those limits

It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths.

Elvis' early music has drama because as he sang he was escaping limits.

If Bob Dylan really is an historian in and of himself in his work, in his performances, he is also an historian with a unique sense of humor. There's always been a bit of a stand-up comic in him.

We write to rekindle the inner spirit.

A vision is a clear sound in a noisy world.

The BBC is a victim of its own independence.

I auditioned on my own. I tried to make a mark for myself without anybody's help, not even Mom's.

The dollar is the reserve currency of the world.

My most memorable science fiction experience was Star Wars and seeing R2D2 and C3PO. I fell in love with those robots.

I don't recognize myself. I don't know who I am anymore." And it's all fun and games until someone loses an I.

Because I am still a little girl who believes in Santa and the tooth fairy and you.

All men are forced into one of two categories: those with eleven fingers and those without.

(about Kindles) I have one and I use it most nights. I always imagine the books staring and whispering, Traitor!