“It's like this when you fall hard for a musician. It's a crush with religious overtones. You listen to the songs and you memorize the words and the notes and this is a form of prayer. You attend th...”

“The connection being that in my head all language began in song and that the best stories inevitably reutrn to song, to a state of rapture. For years, I had assumed that throwing beautiful words at...”

“Music has become more pervasive and portable than ever. But it feels less previous in the bargain. I don't want to confuse artistic and commercial value, but it's just a fact that some kid who rips...”

“There is no sin in the realm of taste.”

“Every now and then, I'll run into someone who claims not to like chocolate, and while we live in a country where everyone has the right to eat what they want, I want to say for the record that I do...”

“But the real life of a writer resides in showing up at the keyboard every day, with the necessary patience and mercy, and making the best decisions you can on behalf of your people. Its a slow proc...”

“It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, 'As pretty as an airport.”

“Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?”

“I suppose there has been nothing like the airports since the age of the stage-stops - nothing quite as lonely, as sombre-silent. The red-brick depots were built right into the towns they marked - p...”

“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It aint no disgrace to be po...”

“Youve changed me forever. And Ill never forget you.”

“Eduardo Galeano notes that America was conquered, but not discovered, that the men who arrived with a religion to impose and dreams of gold never really knew where they were, and that this discover...”

“One cannot spend one's entire life running into bathrooms when danger calls!”

“You must know that it is by the state of the lavatory that a family is judged.”

“Thank god for Vegas. Seriously.A lobotomy wasnt as effective as a weekend three hours of Red Bull away (from LA, not Pismo) where I wore the thinnest pinned stilettos, gambled like a sweaty degener...”