From first to last, the peak is never passed. Something always fires the light that gets in your eyes.

Lessons taught but never learned, all around us anger burns. Guide the future by the past. Long ago the mould was cast.

Live for yourself... there's no one else more worth living for...

More a paraphrase than a quote, really, but it comes from a prayer which was stitched into a sampler above my grandmother's bed. It began like this: 'Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep...'

I am a big fan of Dos Passos' stylistic ability, his poetic approach to prose, but the ideas presented in the songs are quite different from those which he exemplified.

I had spindly little ankles, and growing up in Canada, I couldn't skate. I was no good at any sports so was very much a pariah through those adolescent years.

With people too, you constantly think, "If I'm nice to people and treat them well, they'll appreciate it and behave better." They won't, but it's still not a bad way to live.