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

You don't see artists sitting around a lot, talking about ideology. They find out what they believe, and what they're doing, by doing it.

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.

Habitat for wildlife is continually shrinking - I can at least provide a way station.

The body is an inviolable limit. And you have to really hurt it before you know that.

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.

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.