I do not think that a museum needs to engage with pop culture in order to make itself interesting to museumgoers. Museums are already interesting and engaging with pop culture for its own sake is just a quick way to seem and become dated.

There is no ritual that enhances creativity other than just starting.

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

We estimate that there are perhaps 20,000 prehistoric hunter-gatherers frozen up in those glaciers. Now, if they simply thaw and wander around, it's not a problem, but if they find a leader - a Captain Caveman, if you will - we'll be facing an even more serious problem.

Everyone wants to write a book. Very few people are able to do it.

I believe that the federal government should be laying down broadband like Eisenhower laid down interstates.

More people have more access to more readers for less money than ever before in history. It means a lot of dross; but it means a lot of very talented people can find and nurture a readership in ways that were not possible twenty years ago. From a creative perspective, that is all that writing is about.