They call it the drowning instinct. It's when drowning doesn't look like drowning. (pg. 241)

Tell yourself you’re dead, the way Matt does, so the past can’t hurt you.

...she said all writers were prima donnas, drunks, social misfits, pompous, or depressed. Brilliant, maybe, but completely crazy.

Honestly, Bob: how do you carve a scream?

The pleasure or the benefit that the object of our deed derives from it is every now and then greater or even more important than the one we derive from the deed.

Like a submarine ejecting ballast, he bobbed to the surface as another sense pulled his eyelids all the way open like roller blinds in the old cartoons.

Now that the baby is coming, I will do a lot more balancing. I'm going to be a real mommy.

I try to be as clear as I can be.

I had no direction. I thought, 'I need to make a difference in my life,' and music was my answer.

I will not leave a corner of my consciousness covered up, but saturate myself with the strange and extraordinary new conditions of this life, and it will all refine itself into poetry later on.

Now he is a statesman, when what he really wants is to be what most reporters are, adult delinquents.

Visible things can be invisible. However, our powers of thought grasp both the visible and the invisible – and I make use of painting to render thoughts visible.

I don't see traffic fines as a substitute for a commuter tax.

The way I look at a solo project is, I create what I want with whoever I want.