I love being a struggling artist; it makes me feel very alive.

I really believe in challenging myself, pushing myself to new places.

We are born haunted, he said, his voice weak, but still clear. Haunted by our fathers and mothers and daughters, and by people we don't remember. We are haunted by otherness, by the path not taken, by the life unlived. We are haunted by the changing winds and the ebbing tides of history. And even as our own flame burns brightest, we are haunted by the embers of the first dying fire. But mostly, said Lord Jim, we are haunted by ourselves.

The jocks that used to stuff me into a locker when I was a punk rocker are my best buddies now.

It's not easy getting old, you know. Things become a lot less clear.

You have to smile, if you expect anybody to smile back.

Reading is, at its best, not an escape; it is genuine experience. A novel is not a monologue, but a conversation, a collaboration between writer and reader, an invaluable exchange of human conditions.