Poetry is a vocation. It is not a career but a calling.

My focus is on the reader and that the poet's job is not to inspire himself or herself. The poet's job is to inspire some future reader.

A person who's only suffering can't write a poem. There are choices to be made, and you need to be objective.

Poetry takes place in time. It is a durational. Things take place in sequence.

When something effective takes hold, it can change the world. Whether through a mobile device or a desktop computer, connectivity and creativity make it all possible.

I love theatrics and have a huge imagination: Why would I want to sit onstage and sing a bunch of ballads back-to-back?

I am of the opinion that I am not a political writer, and, moreover, that as far as true literature is concerned, there actually are no political writers. I think that my writing is no more political than ancient Greek theatre. I would have become the writer I am in any political regime.

Los Angeles gives one the feeling of the future more strongly than any city I know of. A bad future, too, like something out of Fritz Lang's feeble imagination.