I have written a lot about snakes. There's something pretty primordial about it.

Performance art is about joy, about making something that's so full of kind of a wild joy that you really can't put into words.

Besides all those whaling details, Moby Dick is about someone who's looking for something so huge, something they've wanted all their life, yet they know when they find it, it will kill them.

Writers want to summarize: What does this mean? What did we learn from this? That's a very 19th-century way of thinking about art, because it assumes that it should make our lives better or teach us something.

There isn't a lot written about the motorcycle culture.

The only stuff I don't like are Broadway musicals. I hate them. I don't even like to talk about it. I can't bear musicals.