My parents are both college professors, and it made me want to question authority, standards and traditions.

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.

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.

Art is very tricky because it's what you do for yourself. It's much harder for me to make those works than the monuments or the architecture.

You should be having more fun in high school, exploring things because you want to explore them and learning because you love learning-not worrying about competition.

It terrified me to have an idea that was solely mine to be no longer a part of my mind, but totally public.

I probably have fundamentally antisocial tendencies. I never took one extracurricular activity. I just failed utterly at that level. Part of me still rebels against that.