I took my vow to poetry; this is where I'm going to be. These are my people; this is my tribe. This is where I'm going to put my energy.

Contemporary movies just drive me crazy. The violence and the sentimentality and the spiritual materialism and Theism and the incredible indulgence in ignorance is so claustrophobic.

My father was a frustrated writer. I think he wanted to write the great American novel.

I think of my father born in this very small, limited situation and then coming out of that. Many people have this story.

I grew up in New York City in Greenwich Village and had parents who were somewhat bohemian so I was always on the nonconformist side of the equation.

The beat literary movement is strong because of those very challenging and individual relationships and styles and contention and so on. So I just feel blessed by this kind of opportunity that came from it. It was a kind of seed.

There are energies that reside in each phone and phoneme. And we can release them. And it can be grand and vast and you can create a realm where you can dwell for a while. Where things are perfect symbols of themselves, no manipulation. And that connects to me to the Buddhist view. From that perspective we can wake up on the spot, be conscious of our world, think of others.