It's much easier to wear a Chairman Mao button and shake your fists in the air and all that then to actually read the Communist manifesto and things like that and actually become involved in politics.

I don't want to express my opinion about actual politics because if I do I have to be responsible for my decision.

One of the big changes in politics has been because families individuals have felt worried insecure... worried about the economy worried about their jobs worried about their kids' futures... actually the disconnect between the public and media discourse and people's everyday concerns has become bigger not smaller.

I guess you'd call me an independent since I've never identified myself with one party or another in politics. I always decide my vote by taking as careful a look as I can at the actual candidates and issues themselves no matter what the party label.

A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.

There's one of my new poems actually - is a good example of where my poetry has ended up. My earlier river poetry was more like a cross between Shelley and Dylan Thomas.

I do actually dabble in a bit of poetry! And I'm yet to pen a script but it is something that I've been telling myself I want to do.

When I hit a block regardless of what I am writing what the subject matter is or what's going on in the plot I go back and I read Pablo Neruda's poetry. I don't actually speak Spanish so I read it translation. But I always go back to Neruda. I don't know why but it calms me calms my brain.

Besides the actual reading in class of many poems I would suggest you do two things: first while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition.

My next project is to get back to that. Actually to learn how to write poetry. I'm not kidding.

Well the great thing for me about poetry is that in good poems the dislocation of words that is to say the distance between what they say they're saying and what they are actually saying is at its greatest.

I'm as much influenced by Joseph Smith and the Mormons as I am more so than by Eliot. Actually I'm much more influenced by the poetry of the Mormons.

What actually makes poetry poetry is of course impossible to define. We recognize it when we hear it when we see it but we can't define it.

A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named.

Poetry even when apparently most fantastic is always a revolt against artifice a revolt in a sense against actuality.

Unfortunately little attention was paid to how Arafat ruled. In fact some saw the harsh and repressive nature of Arafat's regime as actually bolstering the prospects for peace.

Actually I feel music becoming more and more important. It's a big source of inspiration. With what's going on in the world we feel almost desperate. Music also brings you peace.

We have peace with Israel. We're actually the last man standing. So there is going to be immense pressure and people asking 'Why are we having this relationship when it's not benefiting anybody?' Obviously my answer is you always benefit from peace.

Then I realized that secrecy is actually to the detriment of my own peace of mind and self and that I could still sustain my belief in privacy and be authentic and transparent at the same time. It was a pretty revelatory moment and there's been a liberating force that's come from it.

To attain inner peace you must actually give your life not just your possessions. When you at last give your life - bringing into alignment your beliefs and the way you live then and only then can you begin to find inner peace.

To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin.

Since those who believe they need a hero/celebrity outnumber the actual heroes/celebrities people feel safe and comfortably justified in numbers committing egregious crimes in the name of the greater social ego. Ironically diminishing their own true hero-celebrity nature in the process.

I don't actually have a lot of discipline. I've worked hard at music. But I feel like you know I felt like kind of natural at it. I always had a knack for it.

What I was going for in the first two albums I didn't necessarily achieve. Because I was young and because it was my first time out. And the second album was such a 'quickie' sort of 'Let's just get it over with!' But the kind of music I make there's a lot of subtlety in it. And I think it takes a couple of listens to actually really get it.