I realized the universe is 15 billion years old and unspeakably complicated. I still love the teachings of Christ, but I also believe that the human condition prevents us from having any true objective knowledge and understanding of the universe.

I realized the universe is 15 billion years old and unspeakably complicated. I still love the teachings of Christ, but I also believe that the human condition prevents us from having any true objective knowledge and understanding of the universe.

I need an audience way more than an audience needs me.

As a New Yorker you can't help but be proud of the fact that so much music and culture started here. Punk rock, jazz, hip-hop and house music started here, George Gershwin debuted 'Rhapsody in Blue' here; the Velvet Underground are from New York.

Sometimes people will think, I need to have pre-sanctioned spiritual joy. Getting joy from my contemplative meditation practice or getting joy from reading Thich Nhat Hahn books. Those things can be joyful but I think it’s the small, simple joys of playing with dogs or having sex with someone you love or going for a walk outside, stuff that we tend to ignore.

LA is such a crumbling mess of a city. Basically in all my years of travelling, I haven't found another city in the western world that interest me as much as Los Angeles - which might sound like heresy, but most cities, history has already happened and the people living there are sort of living on the bones of the thousand years of history that's already happened there. Whereas LA is always reinventing itself.

When you look at the consequences of climate change, at rainforest deforestation, at antibiotic resistance, these are not necessarily political issues, but rather issues that have the ability to threaten our species.