“My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. "Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?" they asked me the other day. I told them this story: In the forest...”

“I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.”

“There ain't no devil, only God when he's drunk.”

“The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.”

“The Universe is making music all the time.”

“The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.”

“If it's wrong when they do it, it's wrong when we do it.”

“He had conquered murder only to be faced with war. There were no laws for that.”

“I should have paid greater attention to my mentor in graduate school, Samuel Huntington, who once explained that Americans never recognize that, in the developing world, the key is not the kind of ...”

“Have you ever heard somebody sing some lyrics that you've never sung before, and you realize you've never sung the right words in that song? You hear them and all of a sudden you say to yourself, '...”

“If you feel so emptySo used up, so let downIf you feel so angrySo ripped off so stepped onYou're not the only oneRefusing to back downYou're not the only oneSo get up”

“Am I the reason you breatheOr am I the reason you cry?”

“Every great love starts with a great story...”

“I knew, in the silence that followed, that anything could happen here. It might be too late: again, I might have missed my chance. But I would at least know I tried, that I took my heart and extend...”

“You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.”