“The way you do anything is the way you do everything.”

And the earth died screaming, while I lay dreaming.

Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.

I put food on the table and roof overhead. But I’d trade it all tomorrow for the highway instead.

I’m not fighting for justice. I am not fighting for freedom. I am fighting for my life and another day in the world here.

Bill Hicks – blowtorch, excavator, truthsayer, and brain specialist. He will correct your vision. Others will drive on the road he built.

Well I got a bad liver and broken heart, yeah, I drunk me a river since you tore me apart.

I think all songs should have weather in them. Names of towns and streets, and they should have a couple of sailors. I think those are just song prerequisites.

Not the kind of wheel you fall asleep at.

A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn’t.

Writing songs is like capturing birds without killing them. Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers.

We have a deficit of wonder right now.

If there’s one thing you can say about mankind, there’s nothing kind about man.

Songs are really just very interesting things to be doing with the air.

I’m always looking for sounds that are pleasing at the time. The sound of a helicopter is really annoying until you’re drowning, and it’s there to rescue you. Then it sounds like music.

New York forces you to be in endless surreal situations.

I always liked the idea that America is a big facade. We are all insects crawling across on the shiny hood of a Cadillac. We’re all looking at the wrapping. But we won’t tear the wrapping to see what lies beneath.

What intrigued me more than anything else was finding out the way in which everything, all of creation.

I used to say I wanted to genuflect to a woman, put her up on a pedestal higher and higher, way up beyond my grasp…Then I’d find another one.

In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer’s words, to turn pain into knowledge.

There is currency to celebrity, or celebrity is a currency. You can spend it in a lot of ways, or you can squander it. You can be taxed, as well. I really started thinking long and hard about how to use that currency as long as I had it.

Working on The West Wing was similar in many ways to my experience on M*A*S*H, because you had people willing to work late at night to get it just right.

And I think belief is one of those things that comes to people in their own way. And just because I believe in something doesn’t mean I think that you should.

It was repugnant, but it was the only way to communicate.

The younger generation is vibrant with a new psychology; the new spirit is awake in the masses . . . Each generation . . . will have its creed.