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

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.

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

If you want to have friends, you have to remember that nobody's perfect.

A wedding is for daughters and fathers. The mothers all dress up, trying to look like young women. But a wedding is for a father and daughter. They stop being married to each other on that day.

Lady Gaga is the present and the future. She is the most revolutionary and inspirational artist. She is fearless and daring.

The very truth hath a colour from the disposition of the utterer.

A fat man is never so happy as when he is describing himself as "robust.

It's a complicated story [hoe I got into music ]. I actually wrote a book about it, titled For Sue.

At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.

The United States has become a place where entertainers and professional athletes are mistaken for people of importance.

I'm going to go with ZZ Top -- they're my faves . . . because of the whole thing that they do with the guitars and the old Father Time beards.

Much mischief is done in the world with very little interest or design.

I love tour, but I don't like traveling at night or driving long hours. But I love touring. If my kids could be out there full time, I'd probably never go home.