I usually feel something before I know it.

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.

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.

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.

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

Life is a song. Your thoughts are the music. Now play beautiful music and sing a wonderful song.

In the process of forgiveness, you can only control your own actions and decisions.

I hold that while a man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind.

I'm not sure we have the right strategy in Afghanistan. Let me think this over for a few months.

My ambition was always to show aspects of daily life as if we were seeing them for the first time.

If democracy is such a good thing, let's have more of it.

Be not swept off your feet by the vividness of the impression, but say, "Impression, wait for me a little. Let me see what you are and what you represent. Let me try you."

A man is what he does with his attention and mine is not for sale.

This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering its a feather bed.

Dance, like music, knows no geographical boundaries, no linguistic barriers and no racial divisions. All walls crumble where art is concerned. It is a great unifying and integrating force.