There's nothing left of my hometown in Kentucky. All those small and mid-sized towns and cities in the U.S. are just about malls around the edges and suburbs. That was definitely a loss, because everything just gets homogenized. You can't tell where you are, it's all the same.

Nothing lasts in New York. Everything's always changing in really obvious ways.

Another thing that's good about writing to describe a situation or a state of consciousness is that you can finally get it right. That was my intention, and that's always interesting.

It used to be that artists thought of nature as their environment. Now media is our environment. It has been for the past 50, 70 years. It's what you see on TV, on the computer, what is in the magazines and newspapers.

A memoir is a book about some particular thread or theme or moment in a person's life, whereas an autobiography is the entire life.

I'm someone who's really susceptible to tears.

I believe in people treating each other with respect.