I cannot perch among those who think that I am broken.

That’s the secret to performance: conviction. The right note played tentatively still misses its mark, but play boldly and no one will question you. If one believes there is truth in art – and I do – then it’s troubling how similar the skill of performing is to lying. Maybe lying is itself a kind of art. I think about that more than I should.

The twin gods, Necessity and Chance, walked among the stars. What needed to be, was; what might be, sometimes was.

And I realized a wondrous truth: that knowledge could be our treasure, that there were things humankind knew that we did not, that our conquest need not comprise taking and killing, but could consist of our mutual conquest of ignorance and distrust.

I was drawn to his aloofness, the way cats gravitate toward people who’d rather avoid them.

Sometimes the truth has difficulty breaching the city walls of our beliefs. A lie, dressed in the correct livery, passes through more easily.

Heaven has fashioned a knife of irony to stab me with.