I work really out of mythology, so often I work out of a story that has remained lodged inside somehow, or I work out of history, you know, out of a sense of historical inevitability with characters.

Old love, middle love, the kind of love that knows itself and knows that nothing lasts, is a desperate shared wildness.

Our songs travel the earth. We sing to one another. Not a single note is ever lost and no song is original. They all come from the same place and go back to a time when only the stones howled.

I knew each person's delusion, the places their records had scratched, where the sounds repeated.

What men call adventures usually consist of the stoical endurance of appalling daily misery.

Add there was that moment when my mother and father walked in the door disguised as old people. I thought the miles in the car had bent them, dulled their eyes, even grayed and whitened their hair and caused their hands and voices to tremble. At the same time, I found, as I rose form the chair, I'd gotten old along with them.

Money helps, though not so much as you think when you don't have it.