“I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves, straining in circles of light to find more light until the line of words becomes a trail of crumbs that we follow across a page of fresh snow”

“It is time to float on the waters of the night. Time to wrap my arms around this book and press it to my chest, life preserver in a sea of unremarkable men and women, anonymous faces on the street,...”

“The History TeacherTrying to protect his students' innocencehe told them the Ice Age was really justthe Chilly Age, a period of a million yearswhen everyone had to wear sweaters.And the Stone Age b...”

“I could feel the day offering itself to me,and I wanted nothing morethan to be in the moment-but which moment?Not that one, or that one, or that one,”

“all they want to dois tie the poem to a chair with ropeand torture a confession out of it.They begin beating it with a hoseto find out what it really means.”

“But some nights, I must tell you,I go down there after everyone has fallen asleep.I swim back and forth in the echoing blackness.I sing a love song as well as I can,lost for a while in the home of ...”

“They make me...they make me think of being stuck somewhere? I don't know, like weighted down, but then these patches...”

“In painting, three things must be considered - the position of the viewer, the position of the object viewed, and the position of the light that illuminates the object.”

“Talent is nothing more than a pursued interest.”

“There are only two things: love, all sorts of love, with pretty girls, and the music of New Orleans or Duke Ellington. Everything else ought to go, because everything else is ugly. ”

“If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.”

“Jazz is not just 'Well, man, this is what I feel like playing.' It's a very structured thing that comes down from a tradition and requires a lot of thought and study.”

“If your thinking is based on His word and not on what the world is saying then you will be victorious”

“There's no point in saying anything but the truth.”

“I once bought my kids a set of batteries for Christmas with a note on it saying, toys not included.”