I'm very connected to the story, the history, and the trauma people experience.

It's really hard when you read literature in a language that's not your own. There are all these cultural references you have to be born into that particular language to get.

For me, the more I understand the story of others, the greater I am able to learn and help other people.

Sometimes the mere connection we make with each other can change people's lives. It doesn't have to be something big. The mere fact that you're interested in them makes them happy.

I think every person has a unique story to tell and we each have the different life events that happen to us and sometimes we may feel sympathetic toward a certain aspect of that life event.

It's hard to choose the right word, the right line. This Body Mystery is a small book, but it took me over ten years.

I tried to write poems in rhyme. I tried writing songs. Sometimes I jotted down a thought. I would keep a log of spontaneous thoughts.

I read a lot when I was in school in the United States, and even though writing in English is very difficult for me, I wrote in journals.

Art is really about how you capture different things you see around you and bring them into forms and words and shapes and meaning.

You have to experiment with different mediums and things around you [making art].

This is my first collaboration [with Mary Hamill] so I'm going to learn how it's going to work.

As always, the solutions is the simplest way: we have to start and lead by example.

When you don't have the words to say He hears your heart. When you feel like no one understands He carries your pain. When hope seems lost God whispers "Joy is coming.

No this trick won't work. . . . How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?

I respect Chris Brown. I'd like to call myself a friend - I don't know if I'm allowed to do that.

I wanted really to make it moment to moment, partly because I'm an actor and that's how I operate - actors are all about creating the moment.

Teachers are no longer the fountain of knowledge; the internet is.

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, we ourselves flash and yearn

Our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower class.

Every day ask yourself, "What would I do today if I were a better person?

I'll never, ever think of myself as famous, even if I ever get to the point of George Clooney... because I Think you might go crazy if you start reffering to yourself in those terms.