I would say 90 percent of my mail and phone calls are from people who want some kind of help or succor or commitment from me to do something.

When I got to Grinnell College, I was part of the black turtleneck sweater and Camel cigarette crowd of poets and writers.

I got out of college and I went to get my master's in creative writing at San Francisco State. I was working as an actor at the Actor's Workshop, being abused as a intern.

Any political agenda and organization which doesn't begin with personal responsibility is just half the argument. It's just not going to succeed.

Where I didn't have the maturity and the compassion to consider other people's needs, I did a lot of damage.

I think it's good that people value their bodies and take care of them. I think if you cross the line and begin using your body as an asset or as an extension of your vanity, you've gone too far.

The idea of absolute freedom is fiction. It's based on the idea of an independent self. But in fact, there's no such thing. There's no self without other people. There's no self without sunlight. There's no self without dew. And water. And bees to pollinate the food that we eat...So the idea of behaving in a way that doesn't acknowledge those reciprocal relationships is not really freedom, it's indulgence.