“I have been so struck by the mettle of the men who founded this country and wrote the Constitution. What unbelievable persistence and integrity. I wonder if any of us would have the attention span required to forge a whole new world. I wish we did.”

“I have learned to be steady in my course of love, or fear, or loneliness, rather than impulsive in its wasting, either lyrically or emotionally.”

“Loss is the great unifier, the terrible club to which we all eventually belong.”

“The key to change... is to let go of fear,”

“For me, art is a more trustworthy expression of God than religion.”

“A person can live a little bit broken...Most of us do, I guess.”

“I love weather. I'm a connoisseur of weather. Wherever my travels take me, the first thing I do is turn on the weather channel and see what's going on, what's coming. I like to know about regional weather patterns, how storms are created in different altitudes, what kinds of clouds are forming or dissipating or blowing through, where the winds are coming from, where they've been. That's not a passion everybody shares, I know, but I don't believe there are any people on earth who, properly sheltered, don't feel the peace inside a summer rain and the cleansing it brings, the renewal of the earth in its aftermath.”