It wasn't that I wanted to be an artist. But when I took my first drawing class with the painter Doug Ohlson, I could never finish a drawing.

If you're a "good" teacher, somebody who is responsible or careful, teaching takes time. Teaching is performative. Students nowadays evaluate you and there's a lot made in these evaluations about how you perform. Maybe you don't have the greatest delivery in the world. But you know a lot, have a lot to offer. So that's pretty unsettling. We've become so image-based and performance-based as a society. You have to be ready to appear on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" at any moment.

Writing and rewriting are the same thing to me. I don't believe what Allen Ginsberg said that "first thought, then - " I just don't believe that.

I think I'm too indoctrinated. I'm going to use everything I can, and I think if I used an advertisement in that one, it would be yet another way to connect the current day with Wharton. Wharton has been perceived sometimes as being too upper class; Wharton was an extraordinary social thinker. As relevant today as anyone, so she uses some language that isn't current, but to me, I'm so happy about that because I get so bored with the 100 words that people mostly use.

I don't have the education of an art historian. I've certainly read about art and look at art and have educated myself to some extent. But I'm not a skilled or thorough art historian and I wouldn't call myself an art critic.

Obviously the Internet makes everything easier - you get people's addresses and so on and everything seems much more accessible.

You could say this word is better to use than that word, this sentence is good and that sentence isn't. But you don't determine the value of your work for other people.