Personally there is first: imagination; second: the act of writing - and third: the act/act of vocalizing.

Growing up in the fifties, having to wear a dog tag, having to take shelter in a bomb shelter. That turned me toward the road, I did not want to live in fear of that, I was gong to work somehow against what that vision was, and what that horror was. It was poetry, art, music.

We need a world-wide Department of Peace.

The whole red state/blue state thing is very interesting. Watching that shift over the years.

I think Visions of Cody is the most radical book in terms of poetic stretch and the way Jack Kerouac is able to incorporate documentation and incorporate the live tape recording of Neal and so on.

I remember being caught in this earthquake in Mexico City and having a sense of people coming before me, of being part of this lineage. I felt similarly when I went to India and South America.

I get very upset when money is being cut and people can't visit the Grand Canyon.