Just through the process of trying to make the living and the dead feel real, all these little benefits came out. And these benefits turned out to be much more articulate statements of what I really believe. And somehow they were more convincing because they were arrived at at such length.

I've had that my whole career. People were always hedging around the question of: Why are you so dark? What happened to you?

I actually believe that a lot of what people call originality has to do with persistence in the craft.

We've got a real problem with social media that we didn't know we were going to have. It's almost like the demons have gotten out of the box.

If I go to the coffee shop and have a nice interaction with the barista, I don't know what that does for world peace, but we have to assume that in the great basket of goodness maybe that's one little micron or one little neutron that you've put in there.

My heart goes out to him. Sort of. Because empathy depends on how you've spent your day.

I see that being looked at askance as a form of elitism now, which is really scary.