It is bizarre that some people can't understand how a serious poet could work at a finance firm. Goethe was a bureaucrat. Eliot worked as a banker.

It should be everyone's right in a capitalist system to have some way to take advantage of compound interest.

What separates the professionally successful ... from all the rest is their ability to stay steady, to have stamina. It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.

There is, in the heart, the hard-rendering profit. As if we were plucking the leaves from the trees.

The sum of the parts equals less than the whole. Or the howl. Or the how. Or the hole.

I think it is extremely interesting to think that, in some cases, vice might be, finally, more redemptive than virtue.

I'm more interested in the writing than in the content per se (good writing can be about wallpaper and I'll devour it).

It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.

When I moved to New York, the reputation just followed me, and I am regularly invited to play in home games, by writers in particular, though finance folk also invite me on occasion.

Poetry is God's work.

I do think most poets are in denial about what the real taboos in writing are--the real boundaries.

I was the last of the four Dresden dolls. Only me... and I didn't want to be here.

A huge thing for me growing up was going to see my favorite bands and feeling like, 'Okay, cool, they proved themselves and did things in a special way.' That's the most important thing.

It is very hard to dislike someone you have helped

I made, like, five movies while I was in college. I think they just weren't memorable movies. I've taken breaks as the years have gone on - I burn out every once in a while.

Those English and Scottish know how to do accents.

It's not enough to keep winning seconds and thirds. At some point, Ted Cruz has actually won on. [Marco] Rubio's got to actually win a state.

Don't take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you.

I'm in you, you're in me.

The test of civilization is the power of drawing the most benefit out of cities.

We're living in primate heaven. We're warm, dry, we're not hungry, we don't have fleas and ticks and infections. So why are we so miserable?