Again, as egotistical as I am, as self-centered as I am, and as much as I love strangers idolizing me, I find it very crass to be self-promoter in a way.

Write more. That's the advice I would give myself.

I was a French Quarter rat from the moment I could get on a bus by myself and go to the French Quarter. I played music most of my early life and it just seemed that to entertain people was a really good thing to do.

Samuel Beckett is the person that I read the most of - certainly the person whose books I own the most of. Probably 800 or 900, maybe 1,000 books of just Samuel Beckett. By him, about him, in different languages, etc. etc. Notebooks of his, letters of his that I own, personal letters - not to me, but I bought a bunch of correspondence of his. I love his humor, and I'm always blown away by his syntax and his ideas. So I keep reading those.

Be careful out there. There are things that go bump in the night. Actually, there are things that go 'Give me your wallet or I'll kill you' in the night.

Thinking fascinates me, and I probably spend too much time in my mind. My wife says that my perfect world is to be in the Suburban driving, with her next to me and the boys in the back seat and complete silence for two thousand miles.

The sad fact is that the vast majority of drunks stay drunks. There's a small minority of us who reach that fork in the road where one side says 'live' and the other says 'drink'.