These things - the degree of vulnerability, the degree of skill, the degree of the longing to give - are influx all the time, And to lump all that under the word "creativity" assumes something much more static than it is. That's why an artist may be marvelous in her 20s, and be creating automatic crap in her 40s. A writer may be trivial in his 20s, and be writing incredibly in his 50s, because those things are always in flux.

My spirit life is also the medium in which I live. It's not something that comes and goes. Without one the other wouldn't exist.

If I had the money and the drinking capacity, I'd probably live at a roulette table and let my life go to hell.

We have a culture that is indirect in the extreme, where by the time you're five years old, you've watched tons of television, and have been subjected to what I call "the age of interruption," where everything is interrupted every minute. We have constant input from TV, computers, fax machines, telephones, etc. It's very hard for a modern American to have two hours of uninterrupted time. I know how it is because I insist on several hours of uninterrupted time each day, and I know how ruthless I have to be to get it.

The people you have to lie to, own you. The things you have to lie about, own you.

That's what America's all about, man, if it's about anything. You can choose your own name.

To be physically astute and psychologically tended, yet morally insulated and conceptually blind--is to be crazy, not healthy.