It's true you have to screen out a lot living in the city. I stayed away from New York for a long time after college, and when I was first back, I'd read The Village Voice and feel like I was having a panic attack.

Do the obvious, you won't forget it. Do the obvious, you won't regret it. Obvious, obvious, obvious.

What I don't like about teaching is hearing myself say the same thing. I mean, you just want to sort of shoot yourself after a while. But you don't have a million different ways of thinking about what you have been thinking about for many years. And then there's the truism that you're only as good as your students. If they're not into what's going on, it doesn't matter who you are.

I think political situations usually work their way into my writing, but not necessarily in an explicit way. The environment is so chaotic now. There is someone so entirely unreliable in charge, and reliable only in the fact that Thing - I don't say his name - is a pathological narcissist. He's going to do whatever he can to defend himself and whatever will make him look good. That's what matters to him.

Boring people don't know they're boring. That's the problem with boring people.

I'd studied English literature and American history, but the English literature, which I thought was going to be helpful to me in an immediate way, was the opposite. So I had to un-think a lot of things and move out of my own head, and I learned a lot. It was like graduate school, but an un-graduate school or an un-school.

My friends and I sometimes laugh at each other that there is so much maintenance of a body. I paid no attention when I was younger.