If I could ban boxing, I probably would, but I'll tell you in the same breath, I loved it growing up.

I've died so many times. I'm 65. On my 40th birthday, my girlfriend gave me a reel with ways I had died, whether it was by knife, or electrocution or drowning or being thrown off a building or whatever it might have been. I've died a lot of times!

I grew up in Chillum Heights in the Washington, D.C. area., and it was never a garden spot. When guys go, 'Hey, when I grew up, my neighborhood was tough, and it was this and that'... the reality is that it was just a terribly sad place. And thank God, I was able to escape it.

I do always get cast in these world-weary parts.

As reason is a rebel to faith, so passion is a rebel to reason.

There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.

That was one of the reasons I became a writer - I never really had that many friends. I would read a lot, and listen to music. And that was my life.

The Church knew what the psalmist knew: Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the church and all its decoration; it is the Church's greatest ornament.