I was in a lot of bands growing up.

I watched a ton of films growing up, but in a haphazard way. There was nothing scholarly or focused about it.

I liked art history. Also liked the gender ratio, especially compared to applied math and physics.

There's a certain trope in young adult fiction. A young girl gets cancer and becomes this radiant person who's a fountain of insight. Everyone who encounters her is changed for the better. That doesn't happen all the time. The whole thing is much more difficult to process. Adults have trouble with it, so why shouldn't we expect teens to?

Perspective in art has receded along with harmony in music: We tend more and more to see the world as a heap of intrinsically meaningless fragments.

My maternal grandmother had what might be described in a school report as a 'lively imagination.' She told us that she was a direct descendant of Sir Christopher Wren.

Life-writing calls for any number of dubious gifts: A touch of O.C.D., a lack of imagination, a large desk, neutrality of Swiss proportions, tactlessness, a high tolerance for archival dust. Most of all it calls for an act of displacement. 'To find your subject, you must in some sense lose yourself along the way,' is Richard Holmes's version.

I've always had a good imagination. If I saw a sitcom, and everything was made out of cheese, I wouldn't go 'What?' I wouldn't get angry. I'd think, 'Right, OK, all cheese? Amazing.'