The most important thing for a director is being able to communicate.

I think poetry has started to take on a supplementary role of prayer for some people. The churches, I think, including my own, are terrible at teaching people how to pray. It may be that we need to learn from the ground up as religious people, whether Christian or not, how to pray.

I performed in a bowling alley before while people were still bowling. Cut the check, and I will perform anywhere.

I didn't work hard to sit down and not work.

The best feeling in the world is seeing the benefits and rewards of hard work.

I'm not Russell Crowe. I'm not going to do a period piece.

I think poetry can be a kind of secular way in which people can be led to approach the difficult parts of their life, where there's been loss, where there's sadness of a deep kind. If poetry can help people to be more at ease in expressing even to themselves a lot of the darkness and pain of ordinary human existence, then it's serving some kind of cultural role, perhaps more than a cultural role, perhaps it is serving something of a spiritual role.