The only people who claim that money is not important are people who have enough money so that they are relieved of the ugly burden of thinking about it.

Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart.

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.

I never change, I simply become more myself.

How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.

Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.

Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be

Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!

People will say, "there's heaven and hell", and they take it so serious that they look so sorrowful with penitence. I would rather ask them to show me the route that leads to heaven or hell.

Parenting is the most important job on the planet next to keeping Gary Busey off the nation's highways.

This will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.

That's what the world is , after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.

Only mediocrity escapes criticism.

The more you push the budgets up, the more you make records cost $20, the more you make records last 4 and 5 minutes on the radio.

You know, when I'm playing, I think of myself in front of the Wailing Wall with a saxophone in my hands, and I'm davening, I'm really telling it to the Wall.

Who needs food? Your smile alone is enough to nourish me for weeks.

The South creates the civilizations, the North conquers them, ruins them, borrows from them, spreads them: this is one summary of history.

I want to be a good person, and a person that people enjoy working with, 'cause I certainly enjoy working with other people.