My dad was a journalist. He was in Rwanda right after the genocide. In Berlin when the wall came down. He was always disappearing and coming back with amazing stories. So telling stories for a living made sense to me.

I spend up to two hours a day on correspondence. Hearing from fans on the Internet and being able to directly respond to the fan base is exciting. You can cut out the middle man like the fan club... before a recent appearance in Tyler Texas I had fans reaching out on MySpace offering their lake house Mavericks tickets. It was amazing.

On the surface rock and roll changes at an amazing pace. The influence of a figure like the Maharishi can appear and disappear in a matter of months. Talk about old fashioned rock and roll finds itself dead before it begins.

I think what's really amazing is that given the scale of the web and getting the compute power we have today we're starting to see things that appear intelligent but actually aren't semantically intelligent.

Politically Obama's amazing streak of self-destructing opponents who have lain beneath his feet during his unlikely political career appears to be holding.

There are two sorts of curiosity - the momentary and the permanent. The momentary is concerned with the odd appearance on the surface of things. The permanent is attracted by the amazing and consecutive life that flows on beneath the surface of things.

I am very averse to bringing myself forward in print but as my account will only appear as an appendage to a former production and as it will be confined to such topics as have connection with my authorship alone I can hardly accuse myself of a personal intrusion.

If we were to wipe out insects alone on this planet the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Within a few months.

The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him everybody sees them.

I'm never overawed by a situation and I think that's because I've always looked several years older than I am. So because people were treating me like I was 40 when I was 29 I've always felt in control of a situation. People used to say when you're 32 you'll look 32. I'm still waiting for that moment where my age catches up with my appearance.