The research phase was really fascinating - I'm not a closeted nerd, I'm an out-of-the-closet nerd.

Im going to be shaking my booty when Im 55.

I wish I had appreciated my youth - I should have worn tighter clothing when I could have!

For your kindness, I'm in debt to you. For your selflessness, my admiration.

Poetry comes alive to me through recitation.

I've raised my daughter with no television.

TV holds a close second to cars for destroying our society. It's a failed experiment.

I don't want to live in a culture of despair. I'd like to live in a culture of hope.

Life is sweet, life is also very short.

Have I been wrong? Have I been wise to shut my eyes?

I don't think women's prisons are environments for dance routines, and I don't think mass murder is humorous.

All creative work begins as play. The more one plays, the better one works.

She’s all the blood I’ve ever shed. She’s every time I’ve ever thought of death. She’s every time I’ve ever looked at happiness and thought, ‘That’s not meant for me.

Did anyone ever have a boring dream?

I see some parallels [with Barack Obama] but I don't see the leadership that this guy [John F.Kennedy] had of other men and women. It's more than being the smartest guy in room.

Our economy is the result of millions of decisions we all make every day about producing, earning, saving, investing, and spending.

The Helicon of too many poets is not a hill crowned with sunshine and visited by the Muses and the Graces, but an old, mouldering house, full of gloom and haunted by ghosts.

There are very few interviews I turn down, because I really dig talking to people and hanging out.

No matter what happens, I'm going to protect my kid.

The sadness of our existence should not leave us blunted, on the contrary--how to remain thin-skinned, vulnerable and stay alive?

I don't have the genetic make-up of a frontman, but I'm learning how to do it.