I didn't think about whether I was writing poems. I was thinking. And the more I was thinking, the more there was I didn't understand.

When you grow up in a family of languages, you develop a kind of casual fluency, so that languages, though differently colored, all seem transparent to experience.

I wanted to be an inventor, whatever I thought that meant then. I guess I was thinking of Edison or maybe James Watt. Or maybe even Newton.

While I don't script and I don't use other performers, I think my taste for underlying precision gives me something in common with Allan and George Brecht.

From this entertainment industry, may the gods of language protect us.

The ancient Greek "oral poets" all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the muse to help them remember.

I was very committed to the process of composing, working at poems, putting things together and taking them apart like some kind of experimental filmmaker.

I learned enough Hebrew to stagger through a meaningless ceremony that I scarcely remember.

I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.

I tended to emphasize the secular, the casual, the colloquial, the vernacular against the sacred.

The self is an oral society in which the present is constantly running a dialogue with the past and the future inside of one skin.

Smile is a talent, few don't have.

Money Can’t Buy Happiness but It Beats the Hell out of Poverty.

Vision without implementation is counterproductive.

They are an essential tool to give new life to what you already have in your wardrobe. Accessories are like vitamins to fashion: you should use them liberally as such.

Don't mess up the environment until you're quite sure what you're doing.

I thought people would ask me really personal questions because I've shown more of myself, but it's a comedy, and people understand that it's a game we play.

A teleology directed to material ends has been substituted for the lust for adventure, variety, and play.

We have a great obligation not only to look after our own interests, but to engage and to make sure that this meeting is at the beginning of a renaissance of trust.

I'm actually really obsessed with Bruce Springsteen.

I'll kind of tend to beat myself up because I just want it to sound better than better.