When I was a kid and I'd be in trouble. I'd ask God to help me, and then once the fire was out, I wouldn't talk to Him anymore. When I got older, I began to find I needed some help spiritually, just to function.

I'm not like a champion of profanity. I write what I hear, and the characters that I write, that's how they talk. That's how I talk a lot of the time. So I'm not trying to advance a social cause.

I was raised a Catholic, so I can even feel a little, you know, embarrassed or guilty if I'm really offending people's sensibilities. To a degree.

Do you know who W.H. Auden was, Mr. Iscariot? W.H. Auden was a poet who once said, “God may reduce you on Judgement Day to tears of shame reciting by heart the poems you would have written had your life been good”…She was my poem, Mr. Iscariot. Her and the kids. But mostly her. You cashed in for silver, Mr. Iscariot. But me? Me…I threw away gold. That’s a fact. That’s a natural fact.

I was a really bad kid. Then, I got sweet as I got older.

You know me, I've got to find some way to get a fresh fire.