“It used to be called boogie-woogie, it used to be called blues, used to be called rhythm and blues…It’s called rock now.”

He could play the guitar just like ringing a bell.

Sometime we’ll try and reach for things we know we each want and don’t deserve.

Music is music and I think music people are the delivers, the actors, when they put their music out they want to insert their character in it. So they call it such and such so you know how they live so to speak.

All were artists, playing foolish, having fights and making love as if the rest of the world had no racial problems whatsoever.

Don’t bother me, leave me alone. Anyway, I’m almost grown.

Actually I’m writing as best I can, in order to keep the momentum and the career there, but I want to live.

Could you imagine the way I felt, I couldn’t unfasten her safety belt. All the way home I held a grudge, for the safety belt that wouldn’t budge.

Rock is rock, and, rock and roll, rock is just short for rock and roll.

Back in the class room, open your books, keep up, the teacher don’t know how mean she looks.

Of the five most important things in life, health is first, education or knowledge is second, and wealth is third. I forget the other two.

There have been so many empires, kings are kinda going out of style.

I’m a millionaire, but I cut the grass. And each time I cut it, it’s my grass. And that is satisfying.

Science and religion are both the same thing. They’re there; they’re life. If it’s not science, it’s not a fact.

Praise doesn’t mean anything to me. I don’t judge myself.

A song is a song. But there are some songs, ah, some songs are the greatest. The Beatles song Yesterday. Listen to the lyrics.

All I want for Christmas is a rock n roll electric guitar.

I think the most serious genre is the thing you’re going to get the most out of. If you’re trying to satirise a comedy, it’s hard to do that – it doesn’t really work as well. But I love the war movie genre and I’m a fan of all those movies that are part of what this movie is.

I’m defending fiction as a human capacity more than as a popular or dying literary genre.

I hope to be on the scene for a long time. I’d love to be old and gray and still be working in this [horror] genre.

If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.

The variety of genes on the planet in viruses exceeds, or is likely to exceed, that in all of the rest of life combined.

I grew up reading genre writers, and to the degree that Eric Ambler and Graham Greene are genre writers.

I’m a genre writer.

I try to show the students what the major and minor genres of folklore are, and how they can be analyzed.