“In the clearing stands the boxer, and a fighter by his trade. And he carries a reminder of every glove that laid him down, or cut him till he cried out in his anger and his shame “I am leaving! I am leaving” but the fighter still remains.”

I don’t know what I’m going to write when I begin to write. It feels like you are walking down a path, but you can’t see around the bend and you don’t know where you are going to go, which is fun.

She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy I said ‘Be careful his bowtie is really a camera’

I was eating in a Chinese restaurant downtown. There was a dish called Mother and Child Reunion. It’s chicken and eggs. And I said, I gotta use that one.

There’s something about the sound of a train that’s very romantic and nostalgic and hopeful.

It’s actually very difficult to make something both simple and good.

All I’ve got to do today is smile.

We work our jobs, collect our pay, believe were gliding down the highway, when in fact we’re slip sliding away.

Time, time, time, see what’s become of me, While I looked around, For my possibilities; I was so hard to please

Take two bodies and you twirl them into one, their hearts and their bones, and they won’t come undone.

Was a sunny day, not a cloud in the sky. Not a negative word was heard.

Given all the facts that I’m young and I’m in good health and I’m famous – that I have talent, I have money – given all these facts, I want to know why I’m so unhappy.

I would be willing to do almost anything to make Art happy. I care about our friendship. The only thing I won’t do is change the essence of my work.

You know, life is what you make of it- so beautiful or so what.

After all those years of automatic success, you don’t get nervous any more. It’s really necessary to be nervous and be a little bit frightened. It pumps the adrenalin into you and you really get down there and try.

The abstract music is just more interesting because it doesn’t really have anything to say, but if it is good, it creates thoughts and feelings, and I enjoy that. For me, once the music creates those thoughts and feelings, I begin to write a song about it.

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.