I wanted to stay hooked because it was the first time I've been part of the tradition where forgetting was just fine. You do it, you try, you forget, you fail.
I kind of didn't believe the doctors when they came over and they said you're not going to be able to walk again. I'm sorry to tell you this. I thought who is this guy? I just was so impatient with the whole thing. I knew I was going to walk again. I knew that I was going to do that.
Art can be engaged in the world without being specifically politically engaged.
It's the tradition of American writers getting away in order to see the country - to get a better view.
What happens when you're in a crash is you join a crash club, and you talk endlessly about your crash because you don't want to bore your friends with it. And they've heard about the crash so many times.
I didn't really understand that Vipassana is a relatively new form of Buddhism that was based on the storage of pain. So the idea is that every time you don't scream, that's your Buddhist side.
I'm one of the first Americans who wasn't a torturer or an interrogator.
A lot of words in English confuse the idea of life and electricity, like the word livewire.
I genuinely have never been in an audience where most people want that person to fail. I've never been in an audience like that, and I've never seen it as a performer. Only in my dreams, in which case they are always throwing tomatoes and going, "This is the most boring thing I've ever seen."
As a New Yorker, I'm someone who lives on an island and looks across to America.
My secret dream is to write an epic poem. That's probably the most pretentious thing I've said.
I have written a few children's books. The first book that I wrote was for children. It was called "The Package", and it was a mystery story in pictures. It had no words.
My work is more about trying to ask good questions and not trying to come up with big shows. Every fashion company is doing that, every car company is doing that.
I think women are excellent social critics.
I don't take compliments so well. I always hang my head and shuffle and kind of try to immediately forget.
I have written a lot about snakes. There's something pretty primordial about it.
I'm an average enough person to point to the things I've gotten to see that are awe-inspiring.
No single person who has ever lived will be able to tell you what happens. Period. Nobody's right and nobody's wrong.
Why do you have to translate and decode things? Just let the image be. It will have a special kind of reality that it won't once it's decoded.
I just sort of wish people would dance differently. It reminds me of teenage sex.
People who were born alone are defined by feelings like "Who's gonna be with me when I die? Who will ever understand me? Will I always feel so alone? Maybe if I write a book..." and you forget that that doesn't help you so much.
If there are bases on the moon, that would be the end of the moon as we know it.
I'm thrilled by the fact that I made something out of nothing. There it is! It wasn't there before: there it is - I made it! That's pretty powerful, and that's the power that Buddhists give to every single person.
Being an artist is a totally godlike thing to do - and I have a god complex.
I don't care about being famous or having a lot of people go, "She's really good."
