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.

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...'

You can surrender without a prayer, but never really pray without surrender. You can fight without ever winning, but never ever win without a fight.

All this machinery making modern music can still be open-hearted. Not so boldly charted, it's really just a question of your honesty.

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

To me, the highest expression of life is art with jokes. It's very rarified, very difficult to accomplish if you want to be more than just funny, and more than just jokes about human gaseousness.

I read recently that all of us can be defined in adult life by the way others perceived us in high school. I know [people] who had the popular, good-looking path in high school; they tend not to do so well. It was a little bit too easy for them, where for those of us who struggled in every sense, perhaps our determination and self-reliance and discipline were reinforced by that.