I think it's really hard to be joyful. I work hard at it. I always feel like it's a choice. You can be joyful or you can be depressed, and there just doesn't seem to be any future in depression.

Travel is something that I like to do because it gives you lots of images, and it also really makes you think about your own place in the world in a very different way.

I've been writing fiction as long as I've been writing poetry. It's just that the poetry took off, and it took me a lot longer to figure out how to write a story.

If someone didn't believe in me that would kind of be a compliment in a way.

I want a God big enough to love those who don't believe in him.

You want to make a representative selection, but at the same time, you want to give a sense of the whole project. I have this big conflict in my writing life that I'm trying to work out all the time.

There are three kinds of men. The ones that learn by readin’. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

After so much suffering, after enduring so much sacrifice, sanctioned and embraced by our people, what is it that the people of East Timor expect as a result of independence?

I'm in an absolute frenzy towards doing as many things as I can that I want to do today. The rest can wait till tomorrow, next week, if I'm around we'll take a look.

Pushing legislation that would undercut our troops just as we're beginning to make progress in Baghdad.

Salt is the difference between eating in Technicolor and eating in black and white.

I have no advice for anybody; except to, you know, be awake enough to see where you are at any given time, and how that is beautiful, and has poetry inside. Even places you hate.

Invention hovers always a little above the rules.

When I'm in the car sometimes it's like, 'Yeah, man, just put on the pop music.' You know what I mean? I don't want to listen to Tom Waits.

The parallels between Elvis and Michael Jackson as incredible artists is evident. But I think that where Michael Jackson even transcends Elvis Presley.

Talent? That's not talent. Talent is Liza Minnelli tap dancing and singing at the same time. What I just saw was devastation. Dying man on the cross. Salvation in B minor.