I think it was W.H. Auden who said he was lucky that his first favorite poet was Thomas Hardy, who was a good but not a great poet, because if you are exposed to the greats too soon it can just squash you as a writer.

On the one hand, people think they own kids; they feel that they have the right to tell the kids what to do. On the other hand, people envy kids. We'd like to be kids our whole lives. Kids get to do what they do. They live on their instincts.

What makes me mad is arrogance, pretension, putting on airs.

If my work was good enough, I would never have to do publicity.

Chemistry is really about two people who like to act together, I think. It's like tennis in the most cliched way. It's like if you hit the ball, they hit the ball back, and they don't hit it into the stands, and they don't put the ball in their pocket and walk off - and they don't argue with the umpire, you know?

You can go through life and actually speak your mind and do it in an articulate fashion and with a really intelligent point of view.

I wouldn't say we were doing that. I think we probably stopped thinking. Though it took a while to stop thinking.