We don't act the same in every situation. Things bleed into all kinds of other things, from behavior to identity.

Even when it comes to writing fiction, how do you encompass all this stuff that's right on the tip of your tongue? You have to fold that into what you're working on.

It's all the same for me, how I teach, how I write, how I think.

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.

I think there's nothing new going on. Except that, you're even more public than you've ever been.There's some good and some bad to that.

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 .

Why are the mainstream buzz things rarely contemporary? It doesn't happen very often. It's hard to feel culpable or implicated or even apathetic.