Lots of things were there [in the seventies], in the social experience, but not quite named, lurking like a stranger on the edge of the playground.

I grew up with tarot cards and the reading of tea leaves.

My favourite tea is lapsang souchong.

I'm more a dog person than a cat person.

I grew up in North Devon, by the sea, and feel a special affinity for the landscape there, despite a lack of actual ancestry.

I was born in the seventies, age of bad haircuts and grainy colour photos.

I've never been baptised.

[My muse] is, in fact, a woman of the world, and precisely because of this, hopes that a diversity of cultures will endure, and that one bland monoculture does not swamp everything.

If we do want to do that [ colonise space to survive, ], then vacuous materialism is not going to be enough for us.

If we do overcome linear time, I would hope this means dwelling more directly in the fertility of the imagination rather than denying it, as some aspects of Buddhism seem to.

Some Buddhists, however, never seem to get past the void, and I suppose I view this as a kind of Buddhist 'Old Testament' that I don't especially like.

I think my manager of 30-some odd years now, Tom Hammond. He's as fine a person as you could ever meet. And he's had great theatrical taste and has influenced me that way.

Flower and thorn are in the same stem.

My wife keeps me sharp. You know, she ain't going to let me get comfortable with this "Ice Cube" stuff.

African American writers and artists, by the very nature of what they do, will actually enhance or bring together people in a way that might be very, very healthy.

Native plants give us a sense of where we are in this great land of ours. I want Texas to look like Texas and Vermont to look like Vermont.

The list of fun and easily fixed brain diseases is very short.

Even though I love my mother, I didn't want to make an idealized portrait of her. I'm fascinated more by her defects - they are funnier than her other qualities.

Take calculated risks. Act boldly and thoughtfully. Be an agile company.

Life keeps getting better. If anything, you start to carry a certain pride in having survived all those years.