I guess the things I have always loved are from people who were just being themselves. They were doing these things because they couldn't do it any other way. It was for them.

It's weird. People want you to know that they write. They want you to know they're a musician, rather than making music or making stories. It's the strangest thing.

Fellini is a just a province kid. Rome exists for Fellini, not the other way around.

We're artists. We cry out to be exploited on some level. Write a dissertation on my work. Write a biography about me.

[He Stopped Loving Her Today] is all about the experience of being alive and the thought process of consciousness, and then you have these polemical essay-type things going on for a couple decades now. Some of these music books are where you're going to see an anecdote of a person behaving without some kind of commentary.

New York exists for me. Not me for it.

Writing should be like skirts. Long enough to cover what it needs to cover and short enough to maintain interest.