When I do the permanent projects or the big projects, when a work is finished, that's the beginning of its life.

We often forget that WE ARE NATURE. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we’ve lost our connection to ourselves.

My sculpture can last for days or a few seconds - what is important to me is the experience of making. I leave all my work outside and often return to watch it decay.

There is life in a stone. Any stone that sits in a field or lies on a beach takes on the memory of that place. You can feel that stones have witnessed so many things.

Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.

Time gives growth, it gives continuity and it gives change. And in the case of some sculptures, time gives a patina to them.

Nature, for me is raw and dangerous and difficult and beautiful and unnerving.

I think that any sculpture is a response to its environment. It can be brought to life or put to sleep by the environment.

You must have something new in a landscape as well as something old, something that's dying and something that's being born.

When I make a work, I often take it to the very edge of its collapse, and that's a very beautiful balance.

People also leave presence in a place even when they are no longer there.

Getting married is a good deal like going to a restaurant with your friends. You order what you want and then when you see what the other fellow got you wish you had taken that.

When I write lyrics, it's only when I'm angry or hurt or sad. So lyrically it's never really easy going. And the music is always really intense.

Never quit. My book, Chicken Soup for the Soul, was turned down by 33 publishers. It's since sold millions of copies.

Sometimes, people forget my record of fiscal conservatism on major issues in the state legislature. The greatest example is my voting against the pension borrowing scheme in 1997.

Basically, me and Ed Sheeran are kind of Twitter friends - well, I say that. He probably just thinks I'm weird.

America is the most giving nation on Earth. One of the best ways to feel better is by doing something for somebody else.

Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you've depended on more than half of the world.

Deconstruction: peering suspiciously at the text, I wait for it to make a slip and betray itself.

To me, reading a fashion magazine is the last thing I need to do. I've got books I need to read.