Jazz presumes that it would be nice if the four of us-simpatico dudes that we are-while playing this complicated song together, might somehow be free and autonomous as well. Tragically, this never quite works out. At best, we can only be free one or two at a time-while the other dudes hold onto the wire. Which is not to say that no one has tried to dispense with wires. Many have, and sometimes it works-but it doesn't feel like jazz when it does. The music simply drifts away into the stratosphere of formal dialectic, beyond our social concerns.

Gossip is the currency of the discourse, so you should shut up about yourself. Never confess, never explain, never apologize, and never complain.

I hate all that woozy political and psychotherapeutic crap applied to books and art.

My mother was an economics professor. I'm proficient in math, and statistics, game theory, symbolic logic and all of that.

Beauty is and always will be blue skies and open highway.

Martha Stewart contributes more to our civility than the Baptist Church.

Art has political consequences, which is to say, it reorganizes society and creates constituencies of people around it.