I've always believed in people's capacity for goodness. I still believe that people are good. What I'm not so trusting about anymore is their relationship to their own goodness.

People don't believe in positive changes anymore.

The sheep-people don't think for themselves anymore. You can say anything and it's the gospel truth and they don't have to go research it or anything and they believe everything the news tells them. People don't go and do their own investigations if it's relationships or politics or anything.

The term 'the American Left' is as near to being meaningless or nonsensical as any term could really be in politics. It isn't really a force in politics anymore. And it would do well to ask itself why that is.

And I know I'm supposed to feel guilty for wanting people to buy my books... and books in general? Novels and poetry they belong to the realm of art. How dirty of us to try to hawk art! But after a decade of hand-wringing and apologies I can't quite muster the guilt anymore.

I certainly derived my skills as a prose writer from my scrutiny of poetry and of the individual word. But schools don't do things like that anymore - tracking words down to their roots.

When His Holiness won the Nobel Peace Prize there was a quantum leap. He is not seen as solely a Tibetan anymore he belongs to the world.

But my patriotism goes for something beyond what we have. We don't have something that I want to die for - anymore.

As for goals I don't set myself those anymore. I'm not one of these 'I must have achieved this and that by next year' kind of writers. I take things as they come and find that patience and persistence tend to win out in the end.

Music will always be my No. 1 passion but I don't have to be doing it professionally. It's not really about that for me anymore. I feel like I don't have to look at it as a career. I can just rest in it and just be.

That's why this generation is the least racist generation ever. You see it all the time. Go to any club. People are intermingling hanging out having fun enjoying the same music. Hip-hop is not just in the Bronx anymore. It's worldwide. Everywhere you go people are listening to hip-hop and partying together. Hip-hop has done that.

Beyond a certain point the music isn't mine anymore. It's yours.

I love the old Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly movies they're so beautiful to look at. It's such a shame we don't make them anymore. Although I don't know how you could make tap dancing current and topical.

The perceived wisdom is that people do not go in large numbers to black-and-white movies anymore - which is a great shame but I'd love to make a black-and-white movie one day.

I've been involved with violent movies and then I've also said at a certain point 'I can't take it anymore. Please cut it.' You know you've got to respect the filmmaker and it's a really tough issue.

I don't want to produce anymore small or independent movies because it's just too hard these days.

I used to love to go to the movies - I'd see two in a row. A few times I even snuck into the second movie after it started... now that I think about it that's kind of like shoplifting! Needless to say I still love going to the movies but I don't sneak in anymore.

I've made so many movies playing a hooker that they don't pay me in the regular way anymore. They leave it on the dresser.

I had done some flimflam movies but I didn't understand what being an actor meant anymore.

Over the years all these vampire movies have come out and nobody looks like a vampire anymore.

Sometimes in movies I still have to be the hero but it's not all that important to me anymore.

We don't watch the film anymore because we've seen it so many times so we'll introduce it walk out and we'll come back in right about when I wake up in the morning and walk over to the shop and everything's changed.

Whereas I used to get depressed or neurotic or dwell on things I see my son's bright eyes and smile in the morning and suddenly I don't feel like I'm depressed anymore. There's nothing to be depressed about when you've got that.

One thing I have clear is that I don't want to work for money anymore.