That is the first thing I know for sure: (1.) If the questions don't make sense, neither will the answers.

Comedians and jazz musicians have been more comforting and enlightening to me than preachers or politicians or philosophers or poets or painters or novelists of my time. Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz.

Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God.

Educate yourself, welcome life's messiness, read Chekhov, avoid becoming an architect at all costs.

She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies.

The library is full of stories of supposed triumphs which makes me very suspicious of it. It's misleading for people to read about great successes, since even for middle-class and upper-class white people, in my experience, failure is the norm.

The primary benefit of practicing any art, whether well or badly, is that it enables one's soul to grow.