I played trumpet for about two weeks. Sixth grade. And I didn't practice. Maybe a little longer than two weeks, but I didn't practice and I was faking it.

Art imitating life and life imitating art, and it's beyond the job - it will always be a marked period in my life.

Whenever I go someplace I always buy something, collect something, to help me remember the trip. So I guess I collect mementos from my many travels.

The real question is, Why do you feel as though that's emasculating? A man can't have a conflict? When you try to do art, it's how it lands on people, and hopefully some people will see it the way that I saw it, which is all of these awful choices come from the place of a man who's damaged.

A lot of cats in New Orleans, very soulful, very soulful musicians and they assume that they're singers. And they just make that assumption. And so when there's a little intonation problem, people are very forgiving of them because they heard how soulful they play.

Whenever an actor was going to die, I tried to help them understand not to take it personally. It wasn't about them. It's the story.

I come out of journalism, and then book writing. There, it's just you and your editor and maybe a copy desk, looking over your editor's shoulder, and that's the story. It's right there. I can show it to you because it's on paper.