I've always felt alienated. I realized that I've been terrified my entire life. So I can identify that fear which drives so many of the people that I write about.

I'm focusing on writing the best story I can write. Which means I'm doing everything I can to give the artist within me as much power as possible.

I do believe this: That what we call love is always available to us. And of course I'm not just talking about passion. I'm talking about love where you just can't conceive that your life isn't perfect, that you can't conceive of wanting anything.

... I started to die 36 hours before I was born, so dying was a way of life for me.

I have rituals for cleaning out resentments, disappointments, heartbreak, depression and for work. One of the things I do is go over old stuff if I have been unable to write for a while.

I think Mozart, like you, is an example of someone who has the gods moving through him, and his religion was creation.

I think the function of suffering is to let me know that my perception is skewed; what I’m doing is judging natural events in such a way that I am creating suffering within myself. For instance, you have pain over certain conditions, certain situations that occur. And if you just say ‘ok, here I am, I’m going to experience the pain,’ you don’t suffer. The resistance and the degree of the resistance to the natural phenomenon of life causes tremendous suffering.