As I've gotten older I've gotten more liberal and my father is increasingly conservative. It's so shocking to me because I always thought we had the same politics. The day I realized we voted for different presidents I practically fell out of my chair.

I kept a steel wall around my moral and sexual instincts - protecting them I thought from the threats of the real world. This gave me a tremendous advantage in politics if not in my soul. The true me my spiritual core slipped further and further from reach.

It's true that it's within the realm of cultural politics that young people tend to work through political issues which I think is good although it's not going to solve the problems.

I have a lot of nice Italian winter clothes that make me look like a sophisticated Lebanese professor so my friend Robert and I go around pretending to be experts in Arabic politics. It doesn't work in the summer though. I don't have the right clothes.

When I came into politics I always thought there was a possibility I would be killed.

It's a good question because a movie isn't good or bad based on its politics. It's usually good or bad for other reasons though you might agree or disagree with its politics.

Like Indiana Jones I don't like snakes - though that might lead some to ask why I'm in politics.

Idealism is the despot of thought just as politics is the despot of will.

The world of politics is always twenty years behind the world of thought.

I never thought of politics as a profession.

To those who have exhausted politics nothing remains but abstract thought.

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

I always voted at my party's call and I never thought of thinking for myself at all.

It is difficult to discern a serious threat to religious liberty from a room of silent thoughtful schoolchildren.

This career essentially chased me down while I was on the spoken-word scene in New York. I kept hearing that my delivery of my poetry - which was very personal and cathartic at the time- was very moving to folks. People thought that I was an actress because of my delivery when I was just dropping into the work and really pouring out my soul.

Short fiction is the medium I love the most because it requires that I bring everything I've learned about poetry - the concision the ability to say something as vividly as possible - but also the ability to create a narrative that though lacking a novel's length satisfies the reader.

In rap music even though the element of poetry is very strong so is the element of the drum the implication of the dance. Without the beat its commercial value would certainly be more tenuous.

I'd always loved poetry and I'd always loved writing music and composing music but I hadn't thought of putting the two together until around that time.

Poetry being the sign of that which all men desire even though the desire be unconscious intensity of life or completeness of experience the universality of its appeal is a matter of course.

I thought we were gonna open up the world of poetry and music to all kinds of things and yet I can't really think of anyone who's done anything like it since.

I am grateful for - though I can't keep up with - the flood of articles theses and textbooks that mean to share insight concerning the nature of poetry.

Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values.

Journalism wishes to tell what it is that has happened everywhere as though the same things had happened for every man. Poetry wishes to say what it is like for any man to be himself in the presence of a particular occurrence as though only he were alone there.

I'm not really quiet or shy. Ask any of my friends! But I always ground my poetry in life itself. Poetry is an art of language though so I am always aware of every word's meaning or multiple meanings.