What thrills me about trains is not their size or their equipment but the fact that they are moving, that they embody a connection between unseen places.

I think what you can’t see is always what you should be frightened of.

There is only ever one answer to the question what did you do with your life, and it's the same--fleeting and unknowable--for every one of us. I lived.

You think you know someone by looking at his face but what can one face say about the thousand thoughts behind those eyes.

I take the world very personally. I take history personally; I want to place myself in the larger context.

Because music is a language unto itself, when I'm writing, I need silence. I need to hear the music and the rhythms of the words inside my thoughts.

...to make art is to realize another's sadness within, realize the hidden sadness in other people's lives, to feel sad with and for a stranger.