While I've had a great distaste for what's usually called song in modern poetry or for what's usually called music, I really don't think of speech as so far from song.

While I don't script and I don't use other performers, I think my taste for underlying precision gives me something in common with Allan and George Brecht.

I wouldn't be surprised if poetry - poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs - is how the world works. The world isn't logical; it's a song.

I'm aware of my audience in a way, and I do try to engage with them while I'm trying to go about my business of thinking. I believe they help me by providing a focus.

I actually think it's harder to write a song than poetry. I try to pick words that sound lyrical and good and have the right amount of meaning, but if I read them written down, it looks awful. That's why a lot of times, the lyrics come afterward for me, and those somehow have more meaning than having a lyrical idea first and putting music to it.

I've always had a strong feeling for the Statue of Liberty, because it became the statue of my personal liberty.