When you’re working, there’s so much self-loathing. Everyone feels like their stuff is awful. When I was at CalArts I was studying painting—I’m a terrible painter—but I remember there’s a stage of a painting that just looks like a mess and then all of a sudden it becomes a painting. Movies are like that too. Magically it starts to take shape. Now I

When I’m writing, I try not to look at what I’m doing, I just keep going until the end, because as a writer you can just get overcome with doubt. I try not to show it to anyone.

It’s not all art in the way we usually talk about art, but I see no particular value in purity.

As Joan Didion noted, “Whether they are painters or photographers or composers or choreographers or for that matter writers, people whose work it is to make something out of nothing do not much like to talk about what they do or how they do it. . . . Superstition prevails.” This was true for her as well. “In dreams we do not analyze the action, or

“How does a person create a song?” asked Joni Mitchell. “A lot of it is being . . . in touch with the miraculous. . . . The muse has got to be there. You throw a question up to the muse, and maybe they drop something back on you.”

When artists speak, they generally focus on what their work means. They think up a spiel they can repeat over and over, and I guess it’s what most people want to hear. I have listened to and even published countless words on artists’ missions, their purposes, their projects . Some of it is interesting. A lot of times it’s just gassy.

I’ve always been a freak for the zealous pursuit of the better, especially where culture is concerned.