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“I figure there are enough self-opinionated assholes trying to get their ugly little faces in front of you as it is. You ask a lot of kids today what they want to be when they grow up, and they say, 'I want to be famous.' You ask them, 'For what reason?' and they don't know or care. I think Andy Warhol got it wrong - in the future, so many people are going to become famous that one day everybody will end up being anonymous for 15 minutes.”

“But that wasn't fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he had to invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate them, With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers to people they say Oh yes, they're the ones that a lot of wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.”

“Hours and hours passed, with nothing to do but keep the compass on its course and the plane on a level keel. This sounds easy enough, but its very simplicity becomes a danger when your head keeps nodding with weariness and utter boredom and your eyes everlastingly try to shut out the confusing rows of figures in front of you, which will insist on getting jumbled together.”

“Once you let yourself begin to be grown-up, you face a world full of problems you can't solve. The politicians and specialists - adults, all - have a hard enough time trying to figure out where to look. It doesn't have to be that way. The greatest solutions in society are reached by corporate thinking, ruled by a motive to either make a profit or go out of business.”

“I always feel bad for those who, in a sense, cede their authority to others, let others make major decisions about their life and actually believe them. When you're tiny, you have no choice. But as soon as your mind starts working, you pretty well figure it out. And you realize you're a hostage until you're old enough to leave. But as long as you have that goal - I will get out of here - you'll be OK.”

“I try to write for highest common denominator. I don't write for dumb people. I figure if everybody doesn't get it, that's OK. Someone bright enough will get it, and that's who I write for. It's probably not the way to make million-sellers. What can I say? I won't apologize for trying to write for smart people.”

“People realize that we're very good at sending people to war, but we're not good at taking care of them. And people are coming back from war now; years ago, they would have been killed, now they're wounded; and they're coming back alive and with post-traumatic stress. So, I think Americans are sensible enough to know we've got to figure out a way to take care of them.”

“If there's anything you want to do and you can't figure out why you're not doing it, there's a simple answer: you link more pain to doing it than not doing it. Hey, if you don't have enough money, for example I know that's an issue for a lot of people. It was for a good deal of my life. If you don't have money there's only one reason: you link more pain to having more money than to not having it.”

“I sometimes have to write for a while before I figure it out, pretend that I know what I'm doing, sort of like ad-libbing on stage until you remember your line - you hope you sound convincing to the audience. The key is to have enough material, enough threads, so that there's something that can be satisfyingly drawn to a conclusion.”

“The question is, how do you stop the power elite from doing as much damage to you as possible? That comes through movements. It's not our job to take power. You could argue that the most powerful political figure in April of 1968 was Martin Luther King. And we know Johnson was terrified of him. We have to accept that all of the true correctives to American democracy came through these movements that never achieved formal political power and yet frightened the political establishment enough to respond.”

“10 years ago [in 2006], nearly 90 percent of those albums sold enough in that year to reach Gold status. 10 years later, about 30 percent were eligible. With the new rules, we figure about 40 percent of the top 200 best-sellers for the year will be eligible. We were very cautious in our approach to changing how we calculate what is eligible because the integrity of the process is our foremost consideration. It's difficult to get certified sales awards, and it's a big deal and we didn't want there to be a huge change in how many would be eligible.”

“I was living in Japan at the time, Shoko Asahara was an important figure and you could say his name and people would immediately know who you were talking about but since being back in America I've realized most people don't know who he is, which I find odd because he was far worse than Charles Manson. He killed many more people than Manson and was actually trying to kill thousands but wasn't careful enough in his process.”

“Many Americans are feeling, you know, shut out, shut down, the great recession hasn't ended for too many Americans, wages are flat, families are struggling, not enough new jobs, or new businesses are being created, and it's important that we all try to figure out what we're going to do, and that's what I've done my entire life, fighting for a higher minimum wage, or family leave, now paid family leave which I believe in, equal pay for equal work.”