I think poetry can lead to policy, and I can hear the laughter when I say that.

People seem very comfortable having a kind of Cheesecake Factory-type of life.

Whenever I went to an historical moment that was sad or where something terrible happened, it was, for me, a learning moment, a teaching moment for those who survived.

I usually feel something before I know it.

If you're just mired in privilege, there's nothing to learn; learning appears to be over.

Bruce Lee, before he fought, he would try to visualize how the fight would go, because he was visualizing a victorious path out of the combat.

Because I write intuitively and image-by-image and moment-by-moment, my writing has to be powered by feelings and emotions.

I can't stay engaged for years with a book unless it has feelings. It can't be an idea for me - it has to be a felt thing.

Much of the visualizing is imaginative.

People were always hungry, bullied, afraid, paranoid - so I just thought I'd show that in the novel in a kind of suffocating way.

Magical realism as a declaration in the text is usually when someone can't speak and then they must be magically reinvigorated in some way.

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

through prayer we can reach into the future and with loving hands touch those beyond our reach.

Why shouldn’t your curiosity about the world be rewarded?

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

Ctors are always trying to cry and people are actually trying not to cry.

Preservation of the environment, promotion of sustainable development and particular attention to climate change are matters of grave concern for the entire human family.

I have musician friends who play too much golf, and they're not as good at music anymore.

A practitioner in panegyric, or, to speak more plainly, a professor of the art of puffing.

Well, you give me too much credit for foresight and planning. I haven't got a clue what the hell I'm doing.

Kids instinctively know - although they will argue to the contrary - that they really are not mature enough to make good decisions on some important issues.