
“Learning how to play guitar is the one thing I always look back on with wonderment. I’m reminded of “What ifs?” every time I pick up a guitar. Where would I be? I have sort of a survivor’s guilt about it that makes me want it for everyone. Not the “guitar” exactly, but something like it for everybody. Something that would love them back the more they love it. Something that would remind them of how far they’ve come and provide clear evidence that the future is always unfolding toward some small treasure worth waiting for. At the very least, I wish everyone had a way to kill time without hurting anyone, including themselves. That’s what I wish. That’s what the guitar became for me that summer and is to me still.”
― Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.
― Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

“The emotion is Janus-faced: we are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.”
― The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
― The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
“Much has been written and sung of the things we do for love and friendship. Not as much about the mistakes we make trying to banish lonliness.”
― You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish
― You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish

“The thing he hadn’t realized about success was that success made people boring. Failure also made people boring, but in a different way: failing people were constantly striving for one thing—success. But successful people were also only striving to maintain their success. It was the difference between running and running in place, and although running was boring no matter what, at least the person running was moving, through different scenery and past different vistas.”
― A Little Life
― A Little Life

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