“I don’t read reviews and I don’t know what to do with opinions, so I just lose them. They take up space, they become a process of manufacturing a persona, which I want to avoid.”

Madness and witchery as well as bestiality are conditions commonly associated with the use of the female voice in public.

He stood against the wind and let it peel him clean.

Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.

A man moves through time. It means nothing except that, like a harpoon, once thrown he will arrive.

One of the principle qualities of pain is that it demands an explanation.

Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.

Consider incompleteness as a verb.

Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling.

I am a drop of gold he would say I am molten matter returned from the core of earth to tell you interior things.

You doubt God? Well more to the point I credit God with the good sense to doubt me. What is mortality after all but divine doubt flashing over us? For an instant God suspends assent and poof! we disappear.

Simply do something else and return to it later to find the problem wasn’t a problem at all. Ruptures almost always lead to a stronger project.

To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing.

Each night about this time he puts on sadness like a garment and goes on writing.

Comfortable means gradually more and more flattened down, more and more blunt – less and less sharp and biting into you.

Aristotle says that metaphor causes the mind to experience itself in the act of making a mistake.

Existence will not stop until it gets to beauty.

I’m a big fan of Tom Stoppard’s work, and have been since I was in school where I studied him.

Have we not all, amid life’s petty strife

A bit of a crisis of faith, I suppose.

If you see me happy, laughing, or in love then please, don’t disturb me.

And life is given to none freehold, but it is leasehold for all.

A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.

The guardian of our heritage, the teacher of our teachers,

Riches, rightly used, breed delight.