I co-taught a seminar called Small Group Processes with my professor. I learned so much from it, so much about myself, about groups, how this stuff works. I bring all that stuff to teaching now.

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

There are many similarities between Germans and blacks. The nouns themselves are loaded with so much historical baggage it's impossible for anyone to be indifferent to the simple mention of either group. We're two insightful people looking for reasons to love ourselves; and let's not forget we both love pork and wear sandals with socks.

If New York is the City That Never Sleeps, then Los Angeles is the City That's Always Passed Out on the Couch.

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.

Like when you have the right title for something you're writing and you get lost - you can always go back to the title and go, "Yeah, that's what this is about."

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.