"I never really cared about achieving commercial success. As soon as I was signed to a record company, I felt like I made it because I was able to quit my day job. To me, success was just not having to have a boss and not having a day job. So I’ve been living my own version of success since the early ’90s when I first got signed and I haven’t had a job since then. I’m pretty happy about that. When I did have a little bit of commercial success, it really didn’t suit my temperament at all. I’m a terrible public person. I’m happier where I am now."

"I am beginning to understand why renunciation has become sovereign in Germany, why an agony paralyses the spirits; why the few heads still living fall prey, partly to a fruitless aestheticism, partly …"

"Modern civilization is so complex as to make the devotional life all but impossible. It wears us out by multiplying distractions and beats us down by destroying our solitude, where otherwise we might …"

"But in all fairness to Secretary Clinton, when she started talking about this, it was really very recently. She's been doing this for 30 years. And why hasn't she made the agreements better? The NAFTA…"

"I am suddenly comsumed by nostalgia for the little girl who was me, who loved the fields and believed in God, who spent winter days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew and sucking menthol cough d…"