When I go to an art gallery and stand in front of a painting, I don't want someone telling me what I should be seeing or thinking; I want to feel whatever I feel, see whatever I see, and figure out what I figure out.

I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing things and not allowing things outside of myself to distract me or bother me or affect me in any way.

I'm trying to influence the next generation or two generations or three generations behind me. That's a big ambition of mine.

There are never words for the strongest of our feelings. There is just the pain that we cannot share. Pain we must all feel alone.

There are no words and there is no singing, but the music has a voice. It is an old voice and a deep voice, like the stump of a sweet cigar or a shoe with a hole. It is a voice that has lived and lives, with sorrow and shame, ecstasy and bliss, joy and pain, redemption and damnation. It is a voice with love and without love. I like the voice, and though I can't talk to it, I like the way it talks to me. It says it is all the same, Young Man. Take it and let it be.

She is sitting on frozen ground wrapped in a blanket, her pale skin shining. She smiles and she stands and without words, she steps forward, opens the blanket, envelops me within it and within her and within myself. She kisses my cheek, the one not torn, she wraps me and she holds me. Her arms are thin but strong. She whispers in my ear, "I'm glad you're here.

My wife says I'm only comfortable when there's a fight. And it's true. The thing that motivates me is struggle.