It's a really exciting thing. There is a population of really talented writers ? in America and internationally ? whose voices would never be otherwise heard because the market for poetry is so small. It's a platform.

Writing is no dying art form in America because most published writers here accept the wisdom and the necessity of encouraging the talent that follows in their footsteps.

America can't afford to lose writers of this caliber because they just don't come along that often. The worst of it is that there were probably 10 more plays, but the best of it is that he promised and delivered.

A giant problem for America. A small number of us, a little more than 1% of the American population addicted to illegal drugs, but taking a 35 billion dollar bite out of the health care system. Responsible for a third of all the AIDS in America and so on. It's just a tremendous nightmare. That problem needs to be addressed.

Rural America faces tough economic challenges for a variety of reasons, including global competition, population declines, as well as state and federal policy trends.

It seems almost as if a nuclear weapon went off in New Orleans, ... The displacement of the population is the crisis that New Orleans faces. . . . The physical and business processes of a port cannot occur in a ghost town, and right now, that is what New Orleans is.