I don't have the kinds of relationships that are built on any kind of false pretense, not to say that I haven't. I've had just as many as anybody else, but I haven't had them in a long time.

As I stepped to the stage to pick up my degree, and the locusts sang off in the distance.

You can't imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.

Some formulas are too complex and I don't want anything to do with them.

Although the masters make the rules for the wise men and the fools, I've got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

Don't forget to support your public library.

I wanted to understand things and then be free of them. I needed to learn how to telescope things, ideas. Things were too big to see all at once, like all the books in the library-everything laying around on all the tables. You might be able to put it all into one paragraph or into one verse of a song if you could get it right.