I think that if they want people to listen to ten or twelve songs, they have to give the listener a reason to listen to ten or twelve songs or to buy ten or twelve and listen to the whole thing instead of just pulling one or two for their iPod or their computer.

The very best [infographics] engender and facilitate an insight by visual means - allow us to grasp some relationship quickly and easily that otherwise would take many pages and illustrations and tables to convey. Insight seems to happen most often when data sets are crossed in the design of the piece - when we can quickly see the effects on something over time, for example, or view how factors like income, race, geography, or diet might affect other data. When that happens, there's an instant "Aha!".

Punk. . .was more a kind of do-it-yourself, anyone-can-do-it attitude. If you only played two notes on the guitar, you could figure out a way to make a song out of that, and that's what it was all about.

I subscribe to the myth that an artist's creativity comes from torment. Once that's fixed, what do you draw on?

We are like the birds. We adapt. We sing.

Human beings have the incredible capacity for denial. I think they do. And although it's really hard to believe, I have my doubts. But my feeling is that first they have to convince themselves. First they have to justify this stuff to themselves and if they can do that, even for just the moment that it's coming out their mouth, then they can kind of mouth it with kind of believable sincerity, even if some of us.

Always be skeptical about simplicity.