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 demographics are changing - and so what? Citizenship is a question of certain agreed-upon values and that is that. Do we believe that? I think at heart we do.

An artist's job is to be interested in things as they are.

On one level, I am a total softie, sort of depressed and afraid of losing the people I love or failing them. To disguise that, there's all this harsh, poop-centric, external swagger, full of nastiness. I'm a cloaking device.

[In the moment of reading writer and reader] are both briefly their best selves, or at least better selves. A flawed human being writes something and 60 years later a reader picks up the book and something in them rises to meet it.

I've also found that trying to be active with social media changes my moment-to-moment perceptions. Instead of feeling, "What's the deepest version of what's happening here?" I start to feel, "How can I use [or "claim"] this?".

The old and honorable American notion, that a person who works hard should be able to live in freedom and security, with dignity - seems to have taken on a secondary status.