I realize that I've had a very idyllic vision of what spirituality looks like. Honestly, most of Western culture has an idyllic and simplified idea of what enlightenment entails.

The problems we have with our current technology often reveal our own human foibles, and it's these new emotions of cyberspace which reveal our struggles.

I think the future is intrinsically linked with our universal human problems. In fact, it's these very problems, and how we deal with them, which will determine our future.

I'll take a [Pavel] Chekhov comparison any day! He's of course one of the great masters at the short story form, and has helped define traditional conflict as we understand it.

I set many of my stories in a gritty "realist" world, but one that is plagued by an overuse of technology, which is akin to the world we find ourselves living in now.

I really admire the experimentalists who challenge traditional narrative - writers like Ishmael Reed, Michael Martone, Donald Barthelme, Tatyana Tolstaya, George Saunders, and many others.

"Openness" [story] ultimately asks this same question - can a relationship survive complete honesty? As a romantic, I want to say "Yes, of course!" But, over time, I've come to agree with Dan Savage.

[George W.] Bush's presidency was one of the great nightmares of my life to date.

Could a scar be like the rings of a tree, reopened with each emotional season?

Secrecy, censorship, dishonesty, and blocking of communication threaten all the basic needs.

I do believe that music has an intense power to connect us together, to inspire us to become ourselves.

Most of life's battles are won or lost in the mind.

Most of the shows I want to do I'm not smart enough to figure out how to watch.

Listening to music is such an uplifting, spiritual thing. Its far-fetched to some - I understand that. But the way dance music brings people together, its not a big stretch from hymns.

The overall goal [of counseling] is to help family members become 'systems experts' who could know [their] family system so well that the family could readjust itself without the help of an expert.

The Marines have landed and the situation is well in hand.

When Jack White called and wanted me to do a video and play mandolin with The Raconteurs, I didn't know anything about The Raconteurs at that time.

You can't start a fire in the pouring rain.