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.

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.

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.

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

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.

He laughed to free his mind from his mind's bondage.

Pardon all runners, All speechless, alien winds, All mad waters.Pardon their impulses, Their wild attitudes, Their young flights, their reticence.When a message has no clothes onHow can it be spoken.

Your identity is not of your making

I shall never ask never refuse nor ever resign an office.

The impression that a praying mother leaves upon her children is life-long. Perhaps when you are dead and gone your prayer will be answered.

I would say to the new leadership the American people are ready to meet you if you move forward toward the path of democracy.

Fury from the heavens; fury at the gods - inseparable.

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.

When people lose faith in the natural goodness of the human character, the lack of trust in spiritual goodness, that is one reason why corruption has become so widespread today.

She dreams of him that has forgot her love; You dote on her that cares not for your love. 'Tis pity love should be so contrary; And thinking of it makes me cry 'alas!