A writer, or any artist, can’t expect to be embraced by the people [but] you just keep doing your work - because you have to, because it’s your calling.

Ultimately, we are not seeking others to bow to, but to reinforce our individual natures, to help us suffer our own choices, to guide us on our own particular journeys.

I believe myself to be an artist. That was my calling, to do my work, and what's most important to me is to do the best work I possibly can. And that is what means the most, that is what will endure.

My father hated rock and roll - hated it. My first real argument with my father was over the Rolling Stones. And he never, ever liked rock and roll. He just liked me.

As a child I was such an intense daydreamer; I could be so gone that I had to be smacked to come back. They were really worried that I had some kind of catatonia or something because I would go so far out. Because all I wanted to do was talk to god as a child.

My mother loved rock and roll. She loved high-energy music.

I feel about politics the same way I do about religion: I find the best I can from different things.