I've never met anyone with a perfect upbringing. It seems to me that life on planet Earth just doesn't work that way. The basic challenges of getting our needs met and managing boundaries are inherent in growing up human.

To be told you've won a MacArthur fellowship is very flattering and gratifying personally.

We have no sense of the collective anymore in America. The response to Katrina was proof positive of that.

The beauty of love is that in giving it away, you are left with more than you had before.

The drug war is a holocaust in slow motion.

There are two Americas - separate, unequal, and no longer even acknowledging each other except on the barest cultural terms. In the one nation, new millionaires are minted every day. In the other, human beings no longer necessary to our economy, to our society, are being devalued and destroyed.

Choices are much more practical and small when you're dealing with a real story. It's about execution, it's not about content.