As a culture or a civilisation, we are a bit juvenile; it's like 'Oh, I have all this power, whoa, this is so cool, I can transform the earth and I can produce all this wealth. But we're blinded by our success in a naive way. There's more to life, actually, and I think the sustainability issue is also helpful in reminding us about that.

A museum is like a valuing machine. Museums and the industrial society started at the same moment, and they're really tied into each other. They've been all about displaying objects and the kind of wealth that can be derived from objects and promoting that point.

Our culture is hung up on and overemphasises what can be derived from material objects. I think this is something quite new, over the past 200 or 300 years - that life has become about accumulating material wealth. The 21st century is not about accumulating material wealth like the 20th century. It's already eroding.

Kids are very sensitive to the value system of their parents, and I just felt my parents were attaching too much importance, too much meaning, to things.

I'm not a big family person. I'm more of a loner.

My uncle Lionel ended up being a bug guy at 20th Century Fox, which my father had been - and, of course, my cousin Randy - you know, one of the great American songwriters. It was a storied family and, in many ways, very tough to emerge from.

I think marriage and family keeps being written about because that's where we keep our reputations with ourselves - I mean, we can't quite slip the truths we reveal about ourselves at home.

I mean, I look at my dad. He was twenty when he started having a family, and he was always the coolest dad. He did everything for his kids, and he never made us feel like he was pressured. I know that it must be a great feeling to be a guy like that.