I sold a quart of blood and bought a half a pint of scotch

It's hard to win when you always lose.

When you're writing‚ you're conjuring. It's a ritual‚ and you need to be brave and respectful and sometimes get out of the way of whatever it is that you're inviting into the room.

You just write and you don't try to make sense of it. You just put it down the way you got it.

I always had a great appreciation for jazz, but I'm a very pedestrian musician. I get by. I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary.

Don't look back, because someone might be gaining on you.

The trick is to have a career and have a family. It's like having two dogs that hate each other and you have to take them for a walk every night.