While I was raised around churches and had gotten to know a few preachers fairly well, the thought never entered my head that I would one day stand and deliver. Not only was I not interested, I lived with a major struggle: I stuttered.
I'd never really been content with just churning out these slim volumes every three or four years. I've always tried to think of poetry as an active ingredient in the language rather than just something that appears between the covers of thin books.
The CIA will only hire people with impeccable credentials to be a translator. 'Impeccable credentials' means you've never lived outside the United States.
My CIA godfather told me he'd never heard any American speak Japanese so well.
I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.
I'll never feel comfortable taking a strong drink, and I'll never feel easy smoking a cigarette. I just don't think those things are right for me.
Even in the nineties, when it was mad and there were photographers all around the house, it never occurred to me to send someone else out to get cigarettes. It took me five minutes - went for a walk, gave a wave, went back inside.
'Cinderella' the cartoon scared me. I watched the bits with the mice, and the scenes with the stepsisters ripping her dress apart scared me. Cinderella was never even my favorite character in 'Into the Woods.'
I never studied film formally at school, but as a kid, I spent most of my time in cinemas.
Our music over the years has been very cinematic. It's surprising we never really got into film soundtracks.
I've never had that much trouble with the paparazzi, but I don't run the same circles that a lot of these people that do get hounded by the paparazzi.
East Texas isn't known for producing quarterbacks. I was never really on the football circuit. I wasn't the type of guy that put my name out there.
You know why they think I'm reclusive? I don't do the Hollywood stuff. I've never been on the circuit.
I do circuit training - different workouts without stopping. I like having that stamina, where I've never been too tired to put on a match or go above and beyond.
I've never been convinced that experience is linear, circular, or even random. It just is. I try to put it in some kind of order to extract meaning from it, to bring meaning to it.
I now rely on a scanner, which reproduces the passages I want to cite, and then I keep my own comments on those books in a separate file so that I will never confuse the two again.
I have never felt salvation in nature. I love cities above all.
Never take an elevator in city hall.
People have said I can come off a little trial-lawyerish. I tell people I never actually became a lawyer, but I play one at City Hall.
But instead of that stuff you get relationships with people and neighbors that you would never get in a city. People in small towns are a lot more open.
