As a writer you have a duty to be a messenger.

Singing with others is an unmediated, shared experience as each person feels the same music reverberating in their individual bodies. Singing is part of our humanity; it is embodied empathy.

Human language is lit with animal life: we play cats-cradle or have hare-brained ideas; we speak of badgering, or outfoxing someone; to squirrel something away and to ferret it out.

In many traditions, the world was sung into being: Aboriginal Australians believe their ancestors did so. In Hindu and Buddhist thought, Om was the seed syllable that created the world.

I've always viewed politics the following way: if you do a good job at the job you're doing, you'll have opportunities to do other things in the future. Maybe things you never envisioned.

What makes America great was a government that was founded to be limited to doing one thing. I really believe the whole purpose of America, the aspirational value - why everybody who wants to come to this country wants to come here - was because we respected the dignity of every living person.

I would've been intrigued by being a film director. I would've been intrigued by politics. I thought about architecture.

At its worst, Washington is a place where name-calling partisan politics too often trumps policy.