“Songwriting is an art distinct from poetry.”

“contemporary poetry is a kind of Reykjavik, a place where accessibility and intelligence have been fighting a Cold War by proxy for the last half-century. ”

“You know that bad people can make great art, don’t you?’Said Annie.‘Yes, of course. Some of the people whose art I admire the most are assholes.’‘Dickens wasn’t nice to his wife.’‘Dickens didn’t make a memoir called I’m Nice to My Wife.”

“Oh, it was a complicated business, loving art. It involved a lot more ill will than one might have suspected.”

“One thing about great art: it made you love people more, forgive them their petty transgressions. It worked in the way that religion was supposed to, if you thought about it.”

“(about organizing books in his home library, and putting a book in the "Arts and Lit non-fiction section)I personally find that for domestic purposes, the Trivial Pursuit system works better than Dewey.”

“Is it wrong, wanting to be at home with your record collection? It's not like collecting records is like collecting stamps, or beermats, or antique thimbles. There's a whole world in here, a nicer, dirtier, more violent, more peaceful, more colorful, sleazier, more dangerous, more loving world than the world I live in; there is history, and geography, and poetry, and countless other things I should have studied at school, including music.”