Some people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way.

The course was more plodding than heroic: I did not strive valiantly against doubters but took incremental steps studded with a few intuitive leaps.

It was easier to sell a painting that was not for sale.

First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.

To me, torture would be, "I can't think what to write in the next sentence. I'm stuck." Torture would be if you didn't have the next idea.

A friend of mine once asked how to make it in show business and I said "Be so good that they can't ignore you." She thought I was being flip but it's true. The challenge is trying to live up to the opportunities given me.

The banjo is truly an American instrument, and it captures something about our past.