I don't take compliments so well. I always hang my head and shuffle and kind of try to immediately forget.

I'm one of the first Americans who wasn't a torturer or an interrogator.

My work is more about trying to ask good questions and not trying to come up with big shows. Every fashion company is doing that, every car company is doing that.

The main thing that attracts me to Buddhism is probably what attracts every artist to being an artist - that it's a godlike thing. You are the ultimate authority. There is no other ultimate authority.

I didn't really understand that Vipassana is a relatively new form of Buddhism that was based on the storage of pain. So the idea is that every time you don't scream, that's your Buddhist side.

The fewer expectations you have, the better.

The audience creates its own personality, I've noticed, in the first five minutes. They will either be generous, funny, silly, withholding, academic, analytical, grudging. And I'm fascinated with how that gets constructed, because it happens right away.