The Japanese bureaucracy is unique. It is also very powerful, although it is now the object of so much criticism. Many of Japan's brightest made it a pillar of strength and continuity.

When I wake up every morning, I thank God for the new day.

November is auspicious in so many parts of the country: the rice harvest is already in, the weather starts to cool, and the festive glow which precedes Christmas has began to brighten the landscape.

I have tried to be very rational, although I know love and hate are not rational and explained feelings.

Language as a communication tool is the primary element from which literature is created. Even in pre-literate societies, it exists as songs, riddles, or epics that are chanted.

Art, whatever form it takes, requires hard work, craftsmanship and creativity. As a writer, I know my grammar, cadence, the music of prose, and the art of the narrative.

All dictators, the rich and famous, to the lowest security guard who holds a gun, easily forget that power is transitory.

I have always admired teachers because teaching, like the priesthood, medicine and writing, is a vocation. You don't become a teacher because you want wealth. It is the same with writing.

We are shallow because our media are so horribly shallow. Every morning, I peruse the papers, and there is so little to read in them. It is the same with radio - all that noise, that artifice.

We are shallow because we are 'mayabang, ' ego driven, and do not have the humility to understand that we are only human, much too human to mistake knowledge for wisdom.

Poetry is emotion, passion, love, grief - everything that is human. It is not for zombies by zombies.

I was wild and tame and pulled into shreds and crushed into being all at once.

I have no idea why, but I'm grinning back at her. This temperamental, wild creature in front of me who has the nerve to put me in my place.

I ask of cinema what most North Americans ask of psychedelic drugs.

I have a bit of a lava lamp fetish. They are kind of hideous, but there is something so therapeutic about them.

Is typecasting really a problem?

Curiously, once technology gets boring, the social effects get interesting.

Every Christian is endued with a power whereby he is enabled to resist temptations.

Has President Bush exceeded his constitutional authority or acted illegally in authorizing wiretaps without a warrant? Benjamin Franklin would not have thought so.

Nobodys life is as romantic as it is in fiction.

Making an album should be an honest experience. It shouldn't be about trying to gauge where popular music is today; it should be about artistic expression and putting down what you want to put down.