“I have a lot of problems understanding connections between people and how to negotiate that. It makes everything hard offstage.”

It’s a shame really because a couple days in Oklahoma will open your eyes to how much better it would be if the rest of the country was filled with a few more people from Oklahoma.

Step out the front door like a ghost into the fog where noone notices the contrast of white on white.

You want to embrace, but I can’t figure out how to hold on to it.

I can remember being eight years old and having infinite possibilities. But life ends up being so much less that we thought it would be when we were kids, with relationships that are so empty and stupid and brutal.

When everybody loves me, I will never be lonely.

A lot of life is about how you feel relating to dealing with this person or that person

I’m not a spiritual person at all, but I do think that the world doesn’t have to be as lonely as it is.

If you’ve never stared off into the distance, then your life is a shame.

You get so used to doing it that you start to believe it’s simply what everyone does. It makes for an atmosphere of unwelcome that penetrates much of our modern life.

I’ve spent most of my life living in cities where people are obsessed with looking down on people from everywhere else.

There is nothing more important you can ever do for this world than to wake up and be a part of it.

If you wrap yourself in daffodils I will wrap myself in pain…

That’s where the songs come from: that’s what I’d most want people to understand. What sounds good or looks good, that’s nothing. The only worthwhile thing in art is seeing someone else’s heart.

You have to kind of shift the way you look at life when you’re in a group of people that you work with. It’s not so much, do they make you feel good when you’re around them all the time; it’s how can you make everyone feel comfortable together.

Losing fights, or even winning fights, can be heartbreaking, and you can throw that away, but the truth is that it does make our lives better.

People really need to show up early to hear Hollis Brown. They are just an unbelievable live band.

Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

I don’t want people to think I’m not happy when we win – I am. But there’s a difference between being happy for the feeling of accomplishing something and being overjoyed and feeling, ‘This is it – we conquered the world.’ We didn’t. We just won a game.

My life, at least, is divided between writing and performing and mixtures of the two.

A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.

There’s one major difference between James Bond and me. He is able to sort out problems!

The first idea the child must acquire is that of the difference between good and evil.

You know, I have several projects coming up between 2014 and 2015, and hopefully by 2015, I’ll have another hour of stand-up material where I’ll be able to go on the road and tour again.