Americans don't need a metaphor for war. We have war. If anything, we use war as a metaphor for sports.

I realized that we're now at a point of self-reference with the Internet culture that there's almost no there left, you know? It's important to make new things. It's important to make culture, rather than simply reference it. I love a good cultural reference, and it's one of the great joys in my life, but it has to all be in balance with the core job, which is to make something new. And that sort of brings me around to why I started talking about my fondness for marijuana.

Sports is a bloodless rehearsal of confrontation, and everyone shakes hands or high fives or fist bumps at the end to show that everything is okay.

There's a tradition in American fiction that is deadly serious and earnest - like the Steinbeckian social novel.

Anyone of conscience could come look at my book and see it as an esoteric oddity or be intrigued by it. It could happen either way on a thousand different little decisions each individual might make.

The nice thing about live performance is that I've never, ever been let down. Partly I'm lucky that my audience self-selects itself. Generally they know what they're in for, and generally we all just like each other and get along. But I always find one or two or a dozen really interesting people in the audience who make the show different. And that's one of the things I really like about performing.

I am someone who values knowledge, actual knowledge. I also value stories and fiction a whole lot, and that's where the fake knowledge comes in.