I don't need music for the good times. I don't have that kind of need. Music doesn't serve me like that.

Sarah Palin embarrasses herself almost immediately upon opening her mouth to speak or upon moving her fingers to send messages to her dull flock.

Texas is as odd as it is vast.

I lay off a lot modern fiction and only rely on living writers for non-fiction work.

I slept in Uday Hussein's bed - that was just so strange. Went to Saddam's palace, was in a mortar attack - crazy stuff. And like three days later you're back in traffic on Sunset Boulevard. It's all kind of behind you, which is kind of perfect for a guy like me because I can take that and turn it into quite the tale.

More than 30 years ago, in Washington, D.C., I secured a copy of a single by a Los Angeles band called The Bags. The two-song 7-inch, released on Dangerhouse, had a girl on the cover who looked right at you with huge eyes. The songs, 'Survive' and 'Babylonian Gorgon,' were great and made many of my mix tapes.

Nothing brings people together more, than mutual hatred.