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

You sit at a fashion show in another country and you watch all of these paparazzi swarm around a celebrity, only they're a local celebrity, maybe a soap opera star, so you don't have any idea who they are, you just know they're famous to a bunch of stunned Italians. It's weird, because when you can't identify who a celebrity is, they can just look like overslicked stand-ins. That might sound awful, but what I mean is, when you think about most actresses, even in Hollywood, they really aren't that fascinating or glamorous in their own right once you strip away the flashbulbs.

Secrets are never secure because they are always at risk of being found out.

Looking back, [R.E.M.]videos, by in large, have always been art films. I'm thinking of "Losing My Religion." That's a landmark piece.

I have to say I do read partly for escapism. Why can't I escape and learn something?

It's just as political, what you do in the bedroom is just as political as what you do in public.

Someone asked me when it was that I felt confident enough in my writing that I could rely on it as a career. The truth is, I never have. I'm always on the hunt for second, third, or fourth careers. Private detective and cinematographer were previous career choices, but now that I'm older I think I'd be a good portrait painter, rug merchant, or florist.