At the end of night, before you close your eyes, be content with what you've done and be proud of who you are.

I want to view my own efforts to write a novel as a function of my own artistic aspirations rather than a good career move. And I need to learn how to commit to characters for a longer time, to confront the limits of my own capacities for attention and compassion. That's what a writing career does, in the best instance: it allows you to keep after what you can't do.

A lot of what I'm having to do to get myself weaned from football is really limit what media I allow myself to consume. And it's a big drag. But it's also the only way to kick the habit.

I really believe that art has to play a role in changing the moral direction. Mean, selfish people are in charge of the government and we're letting them make us into a much meaner culture. It reminds me of McCarthyism, to be honest, and to the early stages of fascism. There are people out there cheering for war, treating those deaths like some kind of athletic event. How sick do we have to be that this is not only acceptable, but virtually unchallenged by other politicians or clergy or anyone? And it's artists who have to stand up and be counted. Right now.

There's something incredibly liberating about a holiday that encourages children to take candy from strangers

You've got all these parents who are projecting their pathologies of fear onto their kids and those kids are understandably messed up. Tragedies happen and that you have to allow kids to experience their own fear and guilt and sorrow. It's the cover-up that really screws people over. Unfortunately, America specializes in cover-ups.

Nothing on Earth is so beautiful as the final haul on Halloween night.