For years following the death of my mother, I wanted to write about her. I started writing what I thought of as personal essays about growing up as her child, but I never could finish any of them. I think I was too close to that loss, and too eager to try and resolve things, to make her death make sense.

I know my curiosity as a writer and as a person makes me really interested in moving to parts of the country that I haven't explored through writers' festivals or through the kind of campus visits that I do on a regular basis and engaging with people who may be readers of poetry and may not.

I want to just go to places where writers don't usually go, where people like me don't usually show up, and say, 'Here are some poems. Do they speak to you? What do you hear in them?'

When my father died, those years when he was working on the Hubble came back to me, and it seemed fitting to imagine him as having somehow merged with the large mystery that the universe represents.

My favourite dish is pollo ajillo; my favourite drink is a good Rioja with it. And as for my favourite music, oh God - there's so many things I like. Well, I'd say it's 'Walk of Life' by Dire Straits.

I introduced H.Res 430, a congressional resolution calling upon the president to declare a National Day of Prayer for Law Enforcement.

I always think that people who are - maybe 'insane' is too strong a word, but there's more of a spiritual connection. Sometimes they can see below the surface.

Yeah, there's probably been times when I'm watching cable and seeing there's like three movies that Jack's in and I'm sitting hogging a bag of Cheetos in my underwear and I think 'God, what happened to me? Why can't I be something special like Jack?'