I was probably the first kid in my high school to go to Yale. I applied almost as a lark. Then, when I got there, I was the dumbest person in your class.

You have to have conviction and completely question everything and anything you do. No matter how much you study, no matter how much you know, the side of your brain that has the smarts won't necessarily help you in making art.

We know under Nebraska there is an underground aquifer that is probably underneath the whole state, but what form does it take? I kind of want to focus on that, for almost political means, because we keep digging more wells. We're not replenishing, and we're having a crisis in water around the world. But how do you visualize it? I don't know, so I know what I want to study.

When I was very little, we would get letters from China, in Chinese, and they' be censored. We were a very insular little family.

It's funny, as you live through something you're not aware of it.

The only thing that mattered was what you were to do in life, and it wasn't about money. It was about teaching, or learning.

I loved school. I studied like crazy. I was a Class A nerd.