When I got married, my mother was very surprised. She said: 'What on earth is going on? I thought you were gay?'
I exist in a world that's pretty gruesome. All I can tell you is this: I'm trying to keep my balance.
Even when writing your own poems, you need to talk to people; you need to magpie around, getting words and things. I'm very against the celebrity culture that wants to say: 'this is a genius, this is one person who has done something brilliant.' There are always a hundred people in the background who have helped to make it.
The best booksellers are like trustworthy pushers: Whatever they're dealing, you take it.
You have a generation that is saying we are tapping out of religion in many ways. But what they are not saying is that we are tapping out of a serious search for meaning in life.
My district has been hit with three 500-year floods in the last several years, so either you believe that we had a one-in-over-100-million probability that occurred, or you believe as I do that there's a new normal, and we have changing weather patterns, and we have climate change. This is the science.
As an adult, I'll give a writer 50 pages. If the book doesn't interest me in 50 pages, I'll say the heck with it - there are just too many other things to read. A child won't give you 50 pages.
If you look at the automobile in many countries, there is a certified pre-owned market for Lexus, BMW, and many other brands. When you buy a high-end smartphone, you can expect the same kind of a situation there.
When you're outside, and everything is highland, it's like nature has its own sound, and that's one of my favorite sounds. I really loved sitting still silently outside, in a tree or in a bush, to just think.
Some movies get rushed out right after you make them and I'm not always happy with that.
I will remember this day for the rest of my life. There is nothing you can say. It's just like you won the match after the earthquake and it just feels great.
There is nothing that 'Sesame Street' can't teach you, if you let it.
I love going to the cinema and thinking you're seeing something, and you end up on a whole other planet, and you can't believe it.
I don't know where I learned elephants like their tongues slapped. Whatever turns you on.
The family is inclusive of not just your genetic family, but the people that you meet along the way.
Literary fiction - if we must use the term - is not the plotless, meandering indulgence that its detractors would have you believe.
The funniest people I know were, not necessarily troubled, but had a harder time in school or were shy or picked on or something like that. I think that you rely on it. 'Well, I don't think I'm cute and no one wants to hang out with me - I'd better start trying to make people laugh.' I think there's an element of that in there.
I love that on country radio, you can hear a George Strait song, and the next is Sam Hunt. I love that there's such a variety.
I mean you pull the curtain away, and you see I'm just as insecure and neurotic and scared and vulnerable as anybody, you know.
You've got to let it go and say it was the best I could do at that time and place in my life. You hope that the thing you're doing next is a little bit better.
If you are going to be a writer, you have to have self-belief, every writer gets rejections, they say the difference between a successful and unsuccessful writer is an unsuccessful writer gives up, if you keep going you will succeed.
Siren voices tell me, 'You don't have to keep going on.' And then you think, 'I'm a writer. What do I do? Sit there watching my wife clean up?' I don't know. I like being a writer.
I'm very shy and awkward. I think the best thing is to embrace it. It's about accepting who you are and what you want to become and knowing all that you've got to work with, whether it's good or bad. My music was the only place I could be me for the longest time.
That's the difficulty with free-kicks, as you get one, maybe two, and that's why it's tough. You have to score.
You only live once, except for Shirley MacLaine.
I can disappear into things very easily. But with acting, you have to be in the moment, and it gives me this incredibly fulfilling emotion: being really present.
I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.
I think if you ignore the generation after yours, you will be obsolete very quickly.
For 'Power of 10,' you can look at the methodology at CBS.com, it's a company called Rasmussen Reports. We poll thousands and thousands of people for each question, a real cross section of the United States.
You assume things, like whatever country has more firepower wins the wars, and that's actually not true at all.
If what you're writing is genuine, regardless of whether it sounds cliche or people wouldn't necessarily think it's the most brilliant metaphor in the world, it's always important to be genuine with what you're writing; at least, that's how I feel.
My kids, they're like nine or ten years old right now so you give 'em responsibilities just to keep them up on things. It ain't just all about getting on the skateboard or putting your Heelys on, and swimming in the pool all the time. You gotta do stuff like wash dishes, take the trash out, feed the dog.
When you're a dancer, you start with the basics. You don't all of a sudden do a grand jete and pirouette. You start with first position, second, third.
What I love to do requires portraying different characters, and you have to separate your life from the role.
The World Cup is a very complicated tournament - six games, seven if you make it to the final - and maybe if you lose one game you're out, even if you're the best.
You know how in most teenage movies the girl meets the boy, they kiss, they have some type of fallout, then there's an awkward sex scene, and then they're together forever? And they say the perfect things the whole way? That doesn't happen in real life.
