I see myself first and foremost as a student of expression.

What you are will show, ultimately. Start now, every day, becoming, in your actions, your regular actions, what you would like to become in the bigger scheme of things.

I'm interested when things are upside down - because there are so many possibilities in that one moment. There is a lot that is exposed.

Identity is an assemblage of constellations.

We spend so much time bantering about the words when the real open conversations might very well be our actions. I worry about our rhetoric.

You can't teach talent. You can't teach inspiration. You can teach people critical facilities. You can give them techniques. You can teach discipline. And you can teach them about the business.

Each person has a literature inside them.

Hope is when you look out the window and you go, 'It doesn't look good at all, but I'm going to go beyond what I see to give people visions of what could be.'

Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.

Be more than ready. Be present in your discipline. Remember your gift. Be grateful for your gift and treat it like a gift. Cherish it, take care of it, and pass it on.

You've heard that old expression from Shakespeare, 'Just speak the speech'? The words themselves will take you to the reality of the character. And so this led me to interview people.

A word only writes Its night and ridesIts dream.

If God permit you to fall, He will definitely stand by you to rise.

Born from sea foam high up to the tops of the waves on the trail of love.

Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something. All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal. Enlightenment is dropping all that.

I love that [ late-50s Verve recordings] - to me, that's the epitome of vocal jazz. It's my favorite style and era of it.

I loved Judy Garland. I thought she was such a classic beauty. I thought she was so endearing and charming, and I loved her voice. She was such a dreamer, and I think I was, too - and I am.

The language of poetry is not stuck in place. Nothing can own language. I think, however, the genre of poetry itself is very feminine and motherly.

Donald Trump has taken the Peter Principle to unprecedented heights. Or is it depths?

I can always go back to waiting tables, but I won't be very good at it. I'll never be good at it.