For me music is central, so when one's talking about poetry, for the most part Plato's talking primarily about words, where I talk about notes, I talk about tone, I talk about timbre, I talk about rhythms.
I'm not a politically-charged person. I don't want to be. I don't want to talk about politics and I don't want to sing about politics, but if you're talking about environmental issues then you can't talk about one without the other.
I think, at some level, we see young people all over the country mobilizing around different issues, in which they're doing something that I haven't seen for a long time. And that is, they're linking issues together. You can't talk about police violence without talking about the militarization of society in general. You can't talk about the assault on public education unless you talk about the way in which capitalism defunds all public goods. You can't talk about the prison system without talking about widespread racism. You can't do that. They're making those connections.
When people talk about the singularity, when people talk about superintelligent AI, they're not talking about sentience or consciousness. They're talking about superhuman ability to make high-quality decisions.
It's not necessarily a brave thing, people talk about what they think about. There's people out there who love to talk about politics or where they think the countries headed. I don't talk about that I talk about...things that are a little trippier.
I hired a publicist once I got cast in 'Passing Strange,' and one of the first conversations we had was about how I wanted to handle talking about my sexuality. I said, 'It's never been an issue for me. I want to talk about my work, but if something about myself relates to my work, of course I'll talk about it.'
I belong to a bowling team with black and Latino coworkers. And when we get together and we talk about politics - I'm almost quoting him - he said, we don't talk about Black Lives Matters. We talk about what matters to our families. We talk about jobs, and we talk about the fate of the country. That is America, and you can reach those people.
The basic thing is to be humble, and pretend you're a bartender in the tavern of life. Don't get too comfortable and don't really listen to anybody else. Don't stand around with a bunch of writers and talk about writing. You know when you see plumbers at a plumbers convention, usually they're not talking about plumbing: they're talking about whatever it is that two men happen to talk about. They're talking about sports, their wives and children. I just tell my students, don't talk about writing too much, just go out and do it. Find out whatever you need to get to the mainland.
I never talk about anything Hollywood or about politics. I will talk about how concerned I am about funding for Planned Parenthood, and how very sad it makes me when I see anything about children being separated from their parents.
If I see that something is wrong, I don't care who says it. Whether it's a Republican or Democrat, the left or the right. If they are on the opinion of the right thing, that's what I will talk about. I won't proselytize or make the strong things to influence other people about any particular politics, except the decency of things, the logic of things. That's why I don't get that much involved in politics directly.
I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn't popular to talk about it in some circles today. I'm not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love, I'm talking about a strong, demanding love.
Whatever happened to books? Suddenly everybody's talking about these 100-hour movies called 'Breaking Bad'. People are talking about TV the same way they used to talk about novels back in the 1980s. I like to think I hang out with some pretty smart people, but all they talk about is 'Breaking Bad.'
I talk about race a lot. It's been my work ever since I came out of acting school. But it's true that in a way talking about race is a taboo. Because so many of our debates about race have to do not with race but with what we are willing to see, what we will not see and what we don't want to see.
At AT&T, I learned an awful lot about people, and how important it is to have the right people in the right jobs. And when I say 'right people,' I'm not talking about their college degree or work history; I'm talking about things like bearing - How does this person interact with other people? Can he or she talk to you and not tick you off?
I talk about everything - politics, the economy; the news will give you more material than you can ever use. But relationships? That's the ongoing battle. You talk about men and women, and across-the-board everyone can relate to that.
My definition of a 'friend' is, coming from Chicago, someone who says, 'Yeah, sure. You know what? Let's talk about what we can talk about. Let's help each other out. Your politics are none of my business.'