I believe myself to be an artist. That was my calling, to do my work, and what's most important to me is to do the best work I possibly can. And that is what means the most, that is what will endure.

I was at one of the lowest points of my life when we started this film [Dream of Life], except, of course, that I had two great children. But the film is not documenting a decline; it's documenting a rise up - first baby steps and then big steps up. The worst that could have ever happened to me had already happened. And so the film is on the ascent. And I think that gives it a nice spirit.

Freedom is...the right to write the wrong words.

I knew if I lived long enough I would be poet laureate of something.

I have loved books all my life. There is nothing more beautiful in our material world than the book.

I always wanted to be an artist, writer and poet since I was seven, and one has to live long enough to evolve as an artist and do one's finest work.

You can't carve up the world. It's not a pie.