Somebody dies and people eat your food. Funny how that works.

Yes, I am Irish and Indian, which would be the coolest blend in the world if my parents were around to teach me how to be Irish and Indian. But they're not here and haven't been for years, so I'm not really Irish or Indian. I am a blank sky, a human solar eclipse.

The form I most enjoy writing is the sonnet or sonnet-like forms, where you have a - you know, three stanzas or two stanzas that lead into a concluding couplet.

I was studying the sky like I was an astronomer, except it was daytime and I didn't have a telescope, so I was just an idiot.

They've been screaming about the death of literacy for years, but I think TV is the Gutenberg [printing] press. I think TV is the only thing that keeps us vaguely in democracy even if it's in the hands of the corporate culture. If you're an artist you write in your time. Moaning about the fact that maybe people read more books a hundred years ago - that's not true. I think the same percentage has always read.

I recognize now that the conditions that Indians are living in are the conditions that poor people everywhere are living in.

Every movie is a road movie. Every novel is a mystery. Every tortilla chip is sacred.