I came away believing and really deeply troubled by is the extent to which you can have two well-intentioned people talking in a friendly spirit and you get to a point where the two mutual mythologies just don't intersect. So kind of the next piece I'd like to write or think about is how did this left-right divide get so weird and codified.

I always cheerfully say, "Well, you know, the species is adapting, and whatever it needs to do, it'll do," but I do think it's maybe a little bit alarming. Everybody knows that one thing we really have to do is to be more wherever we are, more present, that's just kind of a commonplace. And the whole mobile phone thing is completely 100% the opposite - to never be where you are because you can always be somewhere else; and yet it's so fun and addictive.

Whole idea is really intriguing to me. If you took snapshots of ourselves throughout the day, the way that our mind is twisting and turning, then at the moment of death, the mind would be twisting and turning in the same way. But the Buddhists say it's super-sized because there's no bodily damper on it.

Back in 1992, I had my first story accepted by 'The New Yorker.'

I often wonder if there are certain areas of real life that are roped off, with a sign saying, "Art, don't come in here." But that's maybe a deeper question.

The mind is a machine that is constantly asking: What would I prefer? Close your eyes, refuse to move, and watch what your mind does. What it does is become discontent with that-which-is. A desire arises, you satisfy that desire, and another arises in its place.

[Lincoln in the Bardo] is not a long book. And that meant I could obsess over it and live in it both backwards and forwards and hyper-control everything.