And believe me, a good piece of chicken can make anybody believe in the existence of God.
Nervous means you want to play. Scared means you don’t want to play.
Life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community.
He made me realize that hard work – that the act of finishing, of completing, of accomplishing a task – is joyous.
When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.
If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one’s chances of survival increase with each book one reads.
The ordinary can be like medicine.
When you read a piece of writing that you admire, send a note of thanks to the author.
I’m a method writer. In order to write about the emotion, I have to experience it. I get physically tired and exhausted, devoting hours and hours and hours to it.
Facebook and Twitter and these other social sites bring every, I mean, 140 characters. I mean, I’m on Twitter and I have fun. But I don’t think anybody learns anything about me as a person.
I hear poetry whenever I turn on the radio. Eminem is a better poet than just about everybody. He’s better than Billy Collins; he’s better than Richard Wilbur; he’s better than me.
When anybody, no matter how old they are, loses a parent, I think it hurts the same as if you were only five years old, you know? I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.
He wanted the songs, the stories, to save everybody.
She was in pain and I loved her, sort of loved her, I guess, so I kind of had to love her pain, too.
I don’t want long hair, I don’t want short hair, I don’t want hair at all, and I don’t want to be a girl or a boy. I want to be a yellow and orange leaf some little kid picks up and pastes in his scrapbook.
Every movie is a road movie. Every novel is a mystery. Every tortilla chip is sacred.
I think I was born with a suitcase.
I learned how to stop crying. I learned how to hide inside of myself. I learned how to be somebody else. I learned how to be cold and numb.
In the middle of a crazy and drunk life, you have to hang onto the good and sober moments tightly.
I wanted to do a weird book and reestablish my independent, small-press roots.