If I'm in LA, I'm close to home, and that just brings up all these other things, good and bad. There is a reason why I am not there .

There are things I don't like, like sitting at the head of the class. It makes me uncomfortable. I'll do it in a seminar if I have to, but with a workshop, I try to put myself in the circle somewhere. Because that hopefully frees up some people by making somebody else sit at the nominal head of the table.

Contradictions make people feel off. They'll say, "Hey, you just said this and now this person is doing that, how is that possible?"

I had a student once come up to me and we were talking about this incident, and, of course, I never had the right thing to say. But later on, I realized I should have said: Don't write about trying to change the world, just write about a changed world or a world that's not changing. Let that do the work.

There are certain things that happen in New York that just don't happen anywhere else.

I'm healthier in California, probably a little happier, maybe.

If all the students who slept through lectures were laid end to end, they'd all be a lot more comfortable. If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.