“Sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”

“I find that sometimes if you just sit still, things have a way of finding you before you can find them.”

“...hanging out does not make one an artist. A secondhand wardrobe does not make one an artist. Neither do a hair-trigger temper, melancholic nature, propensity for tears, hating your parents, nor even HIV - I hate to say it - none of these make one an artist. They can help, but just as being gay does not make one witty (you can suck a mile of cock, as my friend Sarah Thyre puts it, it still won't make you Oscar Wilde, believe me), the only thing that makes one an artist is making art. And that requires the precise opposite of hanging out; a deeply lonely and unglamorous task of tolerating oneself long enough to push something out.”

“Life seems sometimes like nothing more than a series of losses, from beginning to end. That's the given. How you respond to those losses, what you make of what's left, that's the part you have to make up as you go.”

“Sometimes you think you know what you want, she said, hugging her children, until you see how much more you can have.”

“Sometimes you can pick who buys you, and for how much. That's what power really is.”