I had tremendous fun fooling around with the way people talked about songs, just the way that became another way of understanding the world.

I think criticism, or a critical engagement with history, has a good deal to do with a willingness to be fooled.

It's very lucky when you have an artist - whether it's a novelist or a filmmaker or a singer - whose career you can follow from the beginning and feel that you are in some way part of it, or part of the same world that it comes out of.

When I'm struck by things, I want to hear more and find out more. I remember when Lana Del Rey was on 'SNL,' this supposedly disastrous performance. She's doing this pretentious torch song, and I thought, 'I don't know what she's doing, but it's really moving me.'

I don't need to see the old school to remember it and the teachers there. They changed the way that I've always looked at life and learning.

The expectation was I would get married and become a mother and settle down. We didn't have any role models. We saw teachers and doctors and nurses, but I'm not a teacher, and there was no possibility of being a doctor or a nurse. I had to work and find my own way.

Margot Livesey, my dear friend, reads all the drafts of what I write, and I read hers. We have an intense working relationship. I've been really lucky to know her. She's a great reader and teacher as well as an astonishingly good writer.

When I was in school, my mother stressed education. I am so glad she did. I graduated from Yale College and Yale University with my master's and I didn't do it by missing school.