“Your whole life is ahead of you. Don't you ever forget that.”

“Music lets you write your own checks. Don't ever forget that.”

“You have your whole life ahead of you," my mother told me, "don't spend all your time in the past." It's good advice, I know it is, but the past has its own ideas. It can follow you around with a life of its own, casting a long shadow.”

“You don't dare to think ahead too much, for you don't want this melted under the heat of your attention, don't want it gone from your life.”

“E.L. Doctorow said once said that 'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard.”

“If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is "thank you," it will be enough.”