To have the chance to see your music be elevated and to have almost universally positive response to that music makes me feel better every day. I feel more confident and inspired and that's fun.

There was a widespread indignation in the American media. They were saying 'How can you make a movie during an election that's about politics? What are you doing? Are you trying to influence people's lives?' To which my response was 'Well I hope so.'

The proper reply to right wing religiosity is not to insist that politics and religion don't mix. This is the stock response of the left.

If a politician murders his mother the first response of the press or of his opponents will likely be not that it was a terrible thing to do but rather that in a statement made six years before he had gone on record as being opposed to matricide.

I think I'm a very good reader of poetry but obviously like everybody I have a set of criteria for reading poems and I'm not shy about presenting them so if people ask for my critical response to a poem I tell them what works and why and what doesn't work and why.

Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict - alternatives to passive or aggressive responses alternatives to violence.

The lessons from the peace process are clear whatever life throws at us our individual responses will be all the stronger for working together and sharing the load.

The number of stressors has multiplied exponentially: traffic money success work/life balance the economy the environment parenting family conflict relationships disease. As the nature of human life has become far more complicated our ancient stress response hasn't been able to keep up.

Reform of the medical liability system should be considered as part of a comprehensive response to surging medical malpractice premiums that endanger Americans' access to quality medical care.

In response to our fast-food culture a 'slow food' movement appeared. Out of hurried parenthood a move toward slow parenting could be growing. With vital government supports for state-of-the-art public child care and paid parental leave maybe we would be ready to try slow love and marriage.