Playing an unamplified electric guitar is like strumming on a picnic table.

I read Warren Zevon's bizarre biography, "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead." His wife, Crystal Zevon, posthumously published a journal he wrote and some interviews with ex-band members. Like [Keith] Richards's book "Life," it's brutally honest.

What women want: To be loved, to be listened to, to be desired, to be respected, to be needed, to be trusted, and sometimes, just to be held. What men want: Tickets to the World Series.

But if I hadn't shoved you off the boat back there,you'd be lost at sea now,wouldn't you? We'd all be lost! So thanks to me you're all standing on land." (Pirates, its a good thing they're idiots)

With a novel, you have to have a story. It's much more important to have it matter to the reader what happens to people, and it has to make sense and end in a way that is satisfying. So I spend a lot more time thinking about that. Then the writing itself usually is easier for me, because I know where it's going.

I become faint and nauseous during even very minor medical procedures, such as making an appointment by phone.

normal person's weekly chore list: 1. clean kitchen. 2. clean bathroom. 3. clean entire rest of domicile. cleaning impaired person's weekly chore list: 1. don't get peanut butter on sheets.