As anthropomorphic and surreal people have said my early writing was, to me it was really stock and almost banal in the sense that it was just description, the poetry of comparing: "Your feet are like A, and your eyes like B."

We live in an age where many things are working hard to conk us out and anesthetize us. Anything we can do to shake us out of that- with no other purpose than to wake us- is valuable.

I'm one of those people that if you're told that if you put your hand in the fire, you'll burn your hand, I won't listen.

"I meditate." That's like saying "I eat." Think of all the food there is! And there are almost as many varieties of mediation.

Africa. There are a gazillion different languages people speak there, different bone structures, so vast and different.

I cannot wait for all the mistakes we have yet to make

I always wanted to move to New York because of the Velvet Underground, because of the picture that they painted of New York City.