Don't take yourself too seriously. And take yourself as seriously as death itself.

I come from a boardwalk town where almost everything is tinged with a bit of fraud. So am I.

Once you get into the book, you've got to constantly find your - the rhythm of your prose. And it ends up being quite a musical experience either way.

If you don't connect yourself to your family and to the world in some fashion, through your job or whatever it is you do, you feel like you're disappearing, you feel like you're fading away, you know? I felt like that for a very very long time. Growing up, I felt like that a lot. I was just invisible; an invisible person. I think that feeling, wherever it appears, and I grew up around people who felt that way, it's an enormous source of pain; the struggle to make yourself felt and visible. To have some impact, and to create meaning for yourself, and for the people you come in touch with.

You can't start a fire Worrying 'bout your little world falling apart This gun's for hire Even if we're just dancing in the dark

It was like Elvis came along and whispered some dream in everybody's ear

I was real good at music and real bad at everything else.