“We figure out what death means when we’re born, practically, and we live our whole lives in some kind of weird denial about it.”

“This earth that we live on is full of stories in the same way that, for a fish, the ocean is full of ocean. Some people say when we are born we’re born into stories. I say we’re also born from stories.”

“We’re organisms; we’re conceived, we’re born, we live, we die, and we decay. But as we decay we feed the world of the living: plants and bugs and bacteria.”

“A lot of ballads are about the mistakes we inevitably make while trying to figure out how to live our lives.”

“Some people think we’re made of flesh and blood and bones. Scientists say we’re made of atoms. But I think we are made of stories. When we die, that’s what people remember, the stories of our lives and the stories that we told.”

“We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.”