I wrote poems and an essay about that weird language. We still remember it to a certain extent, and it still comes up when we're all together. It's so fundamental to how I think.

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.

I think, and a lot of that has to do with where I grew up in California; [status] isn't something I think about that much.

It's weird because there is progress somehow. But there's so much that just feels the same. How important is that rank? How important is it that I am allowed to make these decisions? What does that really mean? What is progress? Is it progress that a black guy gets to push a button for the nuclear bomb? Is that progress? Maybe, I don't know.

I forget how beautiful and calm California is. It's not so much about the place, but also the age that I came to the place and, well, other things. New York is hard.

My British publisher has this independent press. It's pretty small; they actually won last year. And she's got this great energy, and she's fiercely independent, and you know this book was a hard sell. No one wanted to buy this book. But she did, and so it's paid off for her, I hope.