I found it instructive and highly constructive as a writer to go to a point of disaster and come out with a feel for it and then some sort of a lesson based on feeling.

With kids, they force you to get out of bed. They force you to smile. They remind you of spontaneity.

If you created a place in air where they're breathing and running around in, and then they speak in that fictional milieu, it's perfectly authenticated because the whole world relies on you, who've made it possible.

Much of the visualizing is imaginative.

Bruce Lee, before he fought, he would try to visualize how the fight would go, because he was visualizing a victorious path out of the combat.

Once I became historically aware, I realized there are these formative moments of history tied around tragedy and disaster and sacrifice, that led people to survive and take stock and move on with some kind of notion of betterment.

I love the fact that I can go to a museum now that tells me I'm in the postmodern age.