It may be that it is not given to us to know when we are angels. We may only be given to know when others are. This may be one of the reasons we need each other so.

Creativity is the vulnerability to spiritual and physical sensation, and to experience, combined with and acting upon a certain level of skill, combined with the compulsion or longing or need or desire to give.

We have a culture that is indirect in the extreme, where by the time you're five years old, you've watched tons of television, and have been subjected to what I call "the age of interruption," where everything is interrupted every minute. We have constant input from TV, computers, fax machines, telephones, etc. It's very hard for a modern American to have two hours of uninterrupted time. I know how it is because I insist on several hours of uninterrupted time each day, and I know how ruthless I have to be to get it.

My spirit life very much depends on my work. My work very much depends on my spirit life. And I pray every day, as part of my own ritual, to a god I believe in, not a god somebody else believes in.

When the people clamor to be shielded from reality, when they praise their government for keeping things from them, when they choose to conduct their lives within the limits of whatever fantasy the government supplies, then they are no longer consenting to be governed, they are begging to be ruled.

Most of us aren't very graceful about not having our needs met, when and how we want them met.

People are judged continuously everywhere on the most intimate level by the prices on their head. Most of them accept the judgment. It's very hard to have self-respect, or to maintain a state of creativity under these conditions.