When I listen to music - I don't particularly do it for fun all that much. It's not a big part of my life, and I'm not really on top of what's happening in the world of music in the way I was when I was a teenager.

You are only pretentious if you are not sincere.

A stopped clock is correct twice a day, but a sundial can be used to stab someone, even at nighttime.

It seems that every generation needs its public, tweedy, literary personality to sell its consumer electronics. To whatever degree I can live up to the Plimptonian legacy, I am humble and proud.

Life may be miraculous in its unlikelihood in the universe, but it would be a fallacy to suggest that its rareness makes it inextinguishable.

I know nothing about letting go.

Stories hold power because they convey the illusion that life has purpose and direction. Where God is absent from the lives of all but the most blessed, the writer, of all people, replaces that ordering principle. Stories make sense when so much around us is senseless, and perhaps what makes them most comforting is that, while life goes on and pain goes on, stories do us the favor of ending.