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.

The funniest line in English is 'Get it?' When you say that, everyone chortles.

Sometimes you have to avoid mentioning things because people's feelings are tender.

I felt bad for that world that we have given a generation of kids.

I was afraid you had deceased,' he said. 'Or gotten engrossed in a long book.

The highlight of my childhood was making my brother laugh so hard that food came out of his nose.

A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.