“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.”

“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...”

“To look at the work of your peers, and learn how to explain with kindness and precision, the nature of their mistakes is, in fact, how you learn to diagnose your own work.”

“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt.”

“Don't wreck a sublime chocolate experience by feeling guilty.Chocolate isn't like premarital sex. It will not make you pregnant.And it always feels good.”

“There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.”

“This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

“I love you like a fat kid loves cake!”

“Hard work should be rewarded by good food.”

“I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa”

“At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.”

“I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”