I still totally believe in individual rights and individual responsibility and in choosing to do good.

Throw off those chains of reason and your prison disappears.

Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand... prejudice, fear and ignorance walk hand-in-hand.

Howard Roark stood as a role model for me - as exactly the way I already was living. Even at that tender age [18] I already felt that. And it was intuitive or instinctive or inbred stubbornness or whatever; but I had already made those choices and suffered for them.

Everything in moderation, with occasional excess.

Lotus-land as it appears in 'Free Will' is simply a metaphor for an idealized background, a 'land of milk and honey.' It is sometimes also used as a pejorative name for Los Angeles, though that was not in my mind when I wrote it.

The tarot card 'The Tower' seemed a chilling reflection of the events of September 11, 2001.