Never once have I thought that Social Security would be something that would ever be available to me.

The best compliment I get every year is that a band will write me and say, 'We were just on tour, and we had people coming to our show saying they had never heard us before they heard us on your show.'

One person's roar is another's whine, just as one person's music is another's unendurable noise.

I like people. Rightwingers don't. They like business, they don't care about people. I like education, they seem not to care much about it.

It's hard to keep your backbone straight in America. It's easy to turn into that which you hate, and to get smashed.

I write what I can. I think being able to write like Michael Connelly and have a character that goes from novel to novel, or to dramatize history like Vidal or Ellroy, or have an explosively inventive mind like Bulgakov, would be an incredible thing. I don't have that. I only have what I have.

I try to get myself up and moving as early as possible. Optimum is to be on the treadmill while it is still dark outside.