I think we live in a culture that is actually hedging all of it towards comfort and immediacy, things that scare me. All the things that they sell us as a way of life scare me.
Then suddenly something just kicked me. I kind of woke up and realised that I was in a different atmosphere than you normally are. My immediate reaction was to back off, slow down.
I care more about telly because it made me an actor and there's a much more immediate response to TV. You can address the political or cultural fabric of your country.
I remember turning onto the street. I saw barricades and police officers and, just, people everywhere. When I saw all of that, I immediately thought that it was Mardi Gras. I had no idea that they were here to keep me out of the school.
I think people are understanding that I'm immensely proud of my father. If people talk to me about him, I'll certainly respond. And there's a certain generation that still talks about him right off. And I take that with gratefulness and with gratitude.
I'm immensely grateful for the precious gift my mother has given me. She is my hero today and every day.
People write me from all over the country, asking me, and sometimes even telling me, what they think a poet laureate should do. I found that immensely valuable.
I think the growth you get from working at a place like Alabama and with a program under Nick Saban, it helps me immensely.
God is an immensity, while this disease, this death, which is in me, this small, tightly defined pedestrian event, is merely and perfectly real, without miracle - or instruction.
I think you can write a psychological profile of me that says I found a way to immerse my insecurities in a cause large enough to justify whatever I wanted it to.
It took me a long time to know enough about writing to really write short stories. You can't just immerse yourself, as you do in a novel, and see where everything goes. Novels are a very flexible, accommodating form. Short stories aren't.
My parents split up, and a lot of things going on in the outside world made me want to immerse myself in an alternative world.
Heaven to me is percussion and bass, a screaming guitar and a burbling Hammond B-3 organ. It's a soup I love being immersed in.
Few people are as well-situated to speak about the laudable benefits of a humane immigration policy than me.
Looking back, it puzzles me that my parents decided to stay in Shanghai when they must have known that war was imminent. But the cotton works were my father's responsibility, and duty then counted for something.
For the people who ostensibly wish me well or are worried about my immortal soul, I say I take it kindly.
It's not lost on me that everyone dies, but some people have a kind of immortality about them, and you can't imagine that they will ever be gone.
My mother's openness has remained inspiring to me. I strive to be a skeptic, in the best sense of that word: I question everything, and yet I'm open to everything. And I don't have immovable beliefs. My values shift and grow with my experiences - and as my context changes, so does what I believe.
Getting and keeping my immunity became very important to me. For I needed to take care of myself and my family. No one else was worried about me.
Listen, if you were with me on a plane? I'm embarrassed for the people who sit next to me. I have such a regimen! I, like, pound on the face cream because your face will dry out, I get the stuff you put in your nose so no nose germs come in, I take elderberry for immunity, I wear a scarf.
