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.

Both my parents were big readers. My dad liked more macho adventure books like Shogun or spy novels. My mother reads murder mysteries. In fact, so does her mother, my grandma.

Sometimes the concept you're questioning makes more sense to ask just the second one and not the first one.

To have a strong community of people who believe in your potential can make all the difference in the world. So many people have invested in me and I want to do the same for Chicago’s teens.

He who doesn't find a little enough will find nothing enough.

And to have spent the night sleeping and awoken regretful, is better than to have spent the night standing (in prayer) and awaken impressed with oneself!

I'm seen as a chronicler of the class system, which I don't think is unfair.

Now that I'm being very successful, publishers are trying to mainstream me, but I'm unabashedly genre. It's what I like to read, what I like to write

Will there be poppy juice in it?" Phresine shook her head. "Good. My wife and I agreed that only my wine was to be poisoned.

I dare say that I have worked off my fundamental formula on you that the chief end of man is to frame general propositions and that no general proposition is worth a damn.

There's no reason to burn books if you don't read them.

Technical perfection is insufficient. It is an orphan without the true soul of the dancer.