The relationship between truth and a newspaper is like the relationship between the color green and the number seven. Occasionally you will see the number seven written in green, but you learn not to expect this.

Children can find other children to be pals. Children need fathers to be fathers.

March is the month God created to show people who don't drink what a hangover is like.

You get old and you realize there are no answers, just stories.

You'd learn more about the world by lying on the couch and drinking gin out of a bottle than by watching the news.

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.

You don't want to get that sort of sound in your writing that boing that gives you away.