I think there's a lot to be learned from pop culture. But at the same time I see the dangers of using it in an exclusive way to construct meaning in your life.

You are always working towards the moments in which characters experience reckonings or insight or change. I like to track them past those moments.

That was one of the reasons I became a writer - I never really had that many friends. I would read a lot, and listen to music. And that was my life.

Even a documentary portrait of a person that tries to be very accurate is shaped by the filmmaker in so many ways.

My teaching exists in a different part of my brain. However, I am lucky enough to teach very smart graduate students.

I like to buy books for the kids in my family. I guess that's why they call me the 'mean' aunt.

I don't feel sentimental about the past, but I can't help noticing how hard it has become to keep a grip on anything. Maybe it's the totalizing impact of corporate culture, maybe it's the atomizing impact of technology.