My mother died of metastatic colorectal cancer shortly before three P.M. on Christmas Day of 2008. I don't know the exact time of her death because none of us thought to look at a clock for a while after she stopped breathing.

Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan.

In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms I move through them yet in metaphysical ones they seem to move through me.

I was ecstatic they re-named 'French Fries' as 'Freedom Fries'. Grown men and women in positions of power in the U.S. government showing themselves as idiots.

Flexibility is crucial to my fitness. Incorporating a good warm-up and cool-down into every session decreases my chances of injury. I use both dynamic and static stretching in my training. I've starting doing a few yoga sessions which incorporates muscle strength and flexibility.

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.

I have never described the time I was in Doctor Who as anything except a kind of ecstatic success but all the rest has been rather a muddle and a disappointment. Compared to Doctor Who it has been an outrageous failure really - it's so boring.

The soul should always stand ajar ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.

But I honestly don't read critics. My dad reads absolutely everything ever written about me. He calls me up to read ecstatic reviews but I always insist that I can't hear them. If you give value to the good reviews you have to give value to the criticism.

The only thing I fear more than change is no change. The business of being static makes me nuts.