It's really hard to write about art in general. But it's exceptionally hard to fictionalize art and make work that isn't a parody, or is something that could withstand critique and exist in the art world as a valuable object, or a true piece.

I'm ultimately not so much of a professor as a progresser. And I'm ready to move away from what I consider to be this weird mid-century dream that I feel pulls us as a country, and us as a culture, backward.

I don't think secrets are a bad thing. I think there's this idea that everything needs to be transparent in order for it to be free.

I really believe there is something in the nature of a democracy that naturally leads people to distrust the government, to assume because a democracy is built by people just like themselves that there must be secret plots and cover-ups and wizards behind the scenes running the machine.

Talking to all those great writers and artists for the magazine was a form of graduate school for me.

I've never even done a residency.

There is something very romantic about the orphan figure in American literature.