No matter where I go - London Beirut Jerusalem Washington Beijing or Bangalore - I'm always looking to rediscover that land of ten thousand lakes where politics actually worked to make people's lives better not pull them apart.

We tend to think of politics as bad full of dirty tricks negative ads big campaigns but I am here to explore the original meaning of politics which is positive and has to do with balancing competing interests and looking for solutions.

I was looking for something like baseball where there's a lot of data and the competition was pretty low. That's when I discovered politics.

I'm looking forward to the day when America will mature to the point that we are a color-blind society. I'm not so sure that in politics that will ever be reality because politics has a way of separating us based on skin color.

Democrats always like to brag that their guys are smarter than the opponents and Republicans always like to brag that their guys are more moral than the opponents. But if you're looking for morals in politics you're looking for bananas in the cheese department.

I'm looking for a guy who makes you want to dance and write poetry all day long.

We are looking to brands for poetry and for spirituality because we're not getting those things from our communities or from each other.

When you're looking that far out you're giving people their place in the universe it touches people. Science is often visual so it doesn't need translation. It's like poetry it touches you.

Poetry especially traditional Iranian poetry is very good at looking at things from a number of different angles simultaneously.

I've often entertained paranoid suspicions about my fridge and what it's been doing to my poetry when I'm not looking but I never even considered that my fan was thinking about me.