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.

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.

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

We can’t really explain what the goal of mentoring is, until we understand what the church is for.

He said that things could be different in Little Rock, if only the right people could find their voice. I wanted to be on of those people.

To worship God in truth is to recognize Him for being who He is, and to recognize ourselves for what we are.

Not to identify oneself with something, or to associate things with the 'me,' and to see that the idea that there is a 'me,' which is distinct from things, is a delusion.

The people who really have character make deep, unshakable connections to something outside themselves.

When I was a child, I used to cry all the time.

Burlesque is beautiful: It's art, it's fun, it's done with a lot of comedy - an awful lot of big wink-wink and nudge-nudge.

I worry about being a fogy and just writing for orchestras. Like, really, I should be doing more electronic stuff, I feel. Laptops as part of the orchestra, and installation sound, and speakers.

The furthest possible thing from the truth is that I hate or dislike women.

All men are just accumulations dolls stuffed with sawdust swept up from the trash heaps where all previous dolls had been thrown away.