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

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.

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.

I was trying to find out what it was that everybody else understood without giving up my stubborn and hard-won lack of understanding.

Every day People straighten up the hair, why not the heart?

There is a thin line of difference in being courageous and foolish!

One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.

Every now and then I sit and watch the sun rise to remind myself how it's done—peacefully, steadily, warmly, and in beautiful color.

Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.

I can't learn in school, but I can learn from somebody who I think is cool and great.

It's very rare that you can be in a career for as long as I have and still feel like you're constantly learning and coming at it from an almost childlike perspective.

the disorders of your hearts, and their sinful workings are as words before God.

Take one step at a time, there's no need to rush

For me, Bach is like Shakespeare. He has known all and felt all. He is everything.