My father was a corporate lawyer. He went to work in a suit and tie. He had a secretary. He left the house before seven A.M. His professional life felt generic, like a backdrop, a signifier more than a life: office job.

Curiosity is what keeps me open to a sense of hope. It staves off negativity.

Sometimes when you look at somebody else's career or choices or family, there's almost a comfort in knowing there's another option.

When the band first started, it was so much about carving out some space for myself and our audience and our songs.

I'm fascinated by comedy.

I've always adored the filmmaker Sam Fuller. The first time I watched 'Shock Corridor' was such a magnificent discovery. I love his lack of subtlety, the way he tackles serious topics with bold and inappropriate humor.

ICG became a dot-com joke, a one-stock example of extreme hubris on the part of its management and the investment bankers and sell-side analysts who embarrassed themselves by pumping it up.

I always thought the point of life was something richer than that. Something full of great tragedy or comedy, reversal of fortune, ecstasy, that kind of thing. But no, contemporary urban theorists seem satisfied with the merely livable, which always sounds to me like the merely survivable, the not so bad.