From early childhood, I was interested in understanding how the world worked, and assumed I would be some kind of physical scientist or chemist. But the truth was, I didn't know there was another kind of world, the inner world, that was just as interesting, if not more relevant, than what was going on in the outside world.

Your experience is a dream; so is my experience. This stuff about how the frontal cortex is repressed during dreaming, lucid dreaming presents an obvious contradiction to it. The only difference is sensory input.

What is consciousness? Our brain simulates reality. So, our everyday experiences are a form of dreaming, which is to say, they are mental models, simulations, not the things they appear to be.

Dream research is a wonderful field. All you do is sleep for a living.

I have to say that in this particular cow that we're dealing with, those parts of the cow were removed, and so we don't think there's any risk or very negligible risk to human health with this particular incident.

I really liked the idea of creating a journal myself. It's like the way I clear my throat. I write a page every day, maybe 500 words. It could be about something I'm specifically worried about in the new novel; it could be a question I want answered; it could be something that's going on in my personal life. I just use it as an exercise.

If we can provide even a few months of early warning for just one pandemic, the benefits will outweigh all the time and energy we're devoting. Imagine preventing health crises, not just responding to them.

With my friends in Brooklyn, many of them started out as artists. I saw many of these friends move into late middle age, still struggling without health insurance or a cushion. I saw people who had given up being artists. Being an artist necessitates a compromise or living on the edge.