My responsibility is to try to tell true stories. To me a true story is always hopeful, but never simply, uncomplicatedly happy.

I had a moral opposition to eating before dawn on the grounds that I was not a nineteenth-century Russian peasant fortifying myself for a day in the fields.

In those fifty, the Old Man made me take religion seriously. I'd never been religious, but he told us that religion is important whether or not we believed in one, the same way that historical events are important whether or not you personally lived through them.

He responded a few minutes later. Okay. I wrote back. Okay. He responded: Oh, my God, stop flirting with me!

That's why those tapes we made are going to be so great one day, because they'll tell stories that time has swallowed up or distorted or whatever.

Every second of your definitionally temporary consciousness, you are choosing how you spend something that will not last forever.

It's nice to have people who will feel guilty for you.