I was a philosophy major as an undergraduate, and I'm just an arrogant little thing. It's hard for me to admit that I can't understand something, let alone not be in charge of it.

Success has affected my self-definition in that I have more money. Writers pooh-pooh that idea, but it's a huge deal.

I think being tortured as a virtue is a kind of antiquated sense of what it is to be an artist. It comes out of that Symbolist idea, back to Rimbaud and all that disordering of the senses and all of that being some exalted state. When I've been that way, I've always been less exalted than I would have liked.

Having a great dad probably permitted me to pal around with guys in a way that some women don't.

We all need God in certain ways, you know. And I certainly fall short in a lot of categories. And it's at those times that I need much more help than most.

The spiritual self of each of us is that part of us that will never grow old, or ill, or die, but it must be nurtured and invigorated!

The Twist was a guided missile launched from the ghetto into the heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded, as politics, religion and law could never do, in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on the books.

I never go to temples, but when I see a child, I see God in them.