All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.

Passion is not friendly. It is arrogant, superbly contemptuous of all that is not itself, and, as they very definition of passion implies the impulse to freedom, it has a might intimidiating power. It contains a challenge. It contains an unspeakable hope.

The future is like heaven-everyone exalts it but no one wants to go there now.

What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example, that so many people really appear to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free. That happens not to be true. What happened was that some people left Europe because they couldn't stay there any longer and had to go somewhere else to make it. That's all. They were hungry, they were poor, they were convicts. Those who were making it in England, for example, did not get on the Mayflower. That's how the country was settled.

It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.

Then I buckled up my shoes, and I started.

The interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.