Writing is the main gig and teaching and performing are sidelines, an excuse for not writing more. Working on a novel and on an opera make me seriously want to retire and find a volunteer job as a docent at the zoo explaining to schoolchildren where frogs go in the winter.

Librarians, Dusty, possess a vast store of politeness. These are people who get asked regularly the dumbest questions on God's green earth. These people tolerate every kind of crank and eccentric and mouth breather there is.

Bad things don't happen to writers; it's all material.

Every show is your last show. That's my philosophy.

Easter is so disappointing. You suffer all the way through lent, and what do you get for it? A ham.

A man can't eat anger for breakfast and sleep with it at night and not suffer damage to his soul.

I was brought up imagining that cream rises to the top, merit wins out, the race is to the swift and riches to men of understanding, but it ain't necessarily so. The swift stand a better chance if they are also beautiful.