Jack the Rabbit and Weak Knee Willie, you know they're gonna be there. Sloppy Sue and Big Bones Billy, they'll be coming up for air.

The criminal ineptitude makes you furious.

A pop song is a condensed version of a life in three minutes, whereas, when you go to write your prose, you have to find the rhythm in your words, and you have to find the rhythm in the voice that you have found and the way you're speaking.

Did God make man in a breath of holy fire, or did he crawl on up out of the muck and mire?

That Elvis, man, he is all there is. There ain't no more. Everything starts and ends with him. He wrote the book. But for him, I'd be selling encyclopedias right now. There have been a lotta tough guys. There have been pretenders. And there have been contenders. But there is only one king.

The country we carry in our hearts is waiting.

There's people that get a chance to do the kind of work that changes the world, and make things really different. And there's the kind that just keeps the world from falling apart.