Quotes

At the end of the day, it's my choice to do the lap. At the end of the day, it was my choice not to be nominated for the Madden medal. I had my last football responsibility as the club Best and Fairest and that's what I was looking for.

Yes, we do need better representation, but I'm a big believer that we also need to talk about the Uluru Statement of the Heart. We need all of Australia to understand what it was, and is, and what that movement is about.

I think any time people are recognised for standing up for what they believe in and the way that they do it is a step forward, because if we don't stand up for what we believe in and we let people get away with not educating them for things that they have said they're going to think that behaviour is acceptable.

I just figured that, for me to get the best out of myself and do the right thing by myself, I really just needed to step away and find out what I really wanted to do and hopefully getting back to where my people are from and getting out bush could really re-energise me and help heal those wounds.

I ask every Australian to think about what the constitutional exclusion says to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, to see our vast and inspiring history in this land not mentioned in the official picture like that.

Going to a restaurant is one of my keenest pleasures. Meeting someplace with old and new friends, ordering wine, eating food, surrounded by strangers, I think is the core of what it means to live a civilised life.

You can't have a decent food culture without a decent coffee culture: the two things grow up together.

I rush to add that I find the Web infinitely useful for rustling up information, settling arguments or locating the legends of rock stars.

Protein was the most valued ingredient 250 years ago: It was the rarest thing. Now the rarest thing we have is time: time to cook and time to eat.

All tastes have the quality of being in some way artificial and invented. The secret of life is to have enough detachment from your tastes and your values to see that they are a little bit absurd.

Writing is the process of finding something to distract you from writing, and of all the helpful distractions - adultery, alcohol and acedia, all of which aided our writing fathers - none can equal the Internet.

There are as many attitudes to cooking as there are people cooking, of course, but I do think that cooking guys tend - I am a guilty party here - to take, or get, undue credit for domestic virtue, when in truth cooking is the most painless and, in its ways, ostentatious of the domestic chores.

The coffee shop is a great New York institution, but it has terrible coffee. And the more traditional coffee shops are trying to catch up with more sophisticated coffee drinkers.

Cooking is the showy side of domesticity.

I still think the best classic meal in New York is a coffee-shop breakfast - you sort of can't skip it.

The World Series is played in my doubtless too-nostalgic imagination in some kind of autumn afternoon light, and seeing it exclusively in the bitter chill of midnight breaks the spell of even the best of games.

In the New Yorker library, I have long been shelved between Nadine Gordimer and Brendan Gill; an eerie little space nestled between high seriousness of purpose and legendary lightness of touch.

I think that we're always drawn - particularly sophisticated people - are always drawn to the idea of simplicity.

In bookstores, my stuff is usually filed in the out-of-the-way, additional interest sections.

I learned Neil Young songs, Bob Dylan songs and older songs. It wasn't until I moved to Philly that I had aspirations to maybe forming a band.

The ability to work every day was a big part of L.A.'s effect on my process and the band coming out from Philly once a month.

I don't know what the sound is or the song is until I've spent a lot of time on it. I'm always chipping away at it, rethinking it.

I started guitar when I was like thirteen. I had a friend whose dad had an electric guitar. In sixth grade or seventh grade I went over and played it and immediately I was super excited by the whole thing.

I don't like drums dictating the song; like when you hear a fill and then you know the chorus is coming up.

I don't know how it is for people who write fiction or literature, but for me, when I'm writing music, especially with this album, I felt compelled to hold up my end of the conversation. I want people to connect deeper with it.