What happens in New York affects national policy in very significant ways.

People think that the politician is just part of a system, and whether they're lying or not doesn't matter.

People respond to political characters in archetypal ways. A fun game is to think of a politician and ask, "Which god is that? Are they like Aries? Are they like Athena?"

Oftentimes people get it wrong when they say we need to educate voters first and then give them power. I tend to favor giving them power first.

One of the most dangerous things about Fox News isn't that it's right wing but that it's nihilistic. It takes away the capacity to believe in politics.

There is a long American tradition of suspicion of concentrated economic power because of its tendency to corrupt government and turn it from a democracy into a plutocracy.

My current goal is to change the way we think about antitrust and anti-monopoly.

I think the reason you see so many people dropping out of politics is because there's an anti-poetic strain in modern political discourse.

New York City is one of the most vulnerable cities in the world to climate change, so I see Keystone as the central threat to New York.

There's a tendency, especially among academics, to see politics as deeply dirty and deeply egotistical.

Creativity is essential to any kind of joyful living. Sometimes I act, sometimes I draw, I paint, I write poems. I can't imagine living without it.

A good story conveys a message that strengthens our values.

When I think of you, and you are not there, I see you in my mind's eye always with a book in your hand.

Everything you do has to drive content, and the rest takes care of itself.

If lyrics make people do things, how come we don't love each other?

It's good walking with a horse in ones hand.

Death like a lover, caressing him, promising him peace, running its fingers through his hair, its tongue in his ear. She put her own two fingers in her mouth. Im so sorry. And pulled the trigger

I'd never done anything that required a five-year commitment. To build a show that seems to have kept the imagination of the world so much was a bit otherworldly.

Reluctance to begin is quick to befriend procrastination. . . .

I don't speak Arabic - I know a little to get by, but that's all.

There is no comment on pictures but pictures, on music but music, on poems but poetry. If you do, you do. If you don't, you don't. And that's all there is to that.