I defy anyone to finish Halldor Laxness's 'Independent People' without wetting the pages with tears.

I'm not fussy about my food.

I'm a poor person who has money.

I had a brief period of questioning whether I should perhaps adopt a child. And my New Yorker editor, Henry Finder, was horrified by the notion.

I don't think I could live with someone that I didn't have an intellectual friendship with.

I don't dislike people; I love people.

There used to be rather serious firewalls between the artist and the buying public - the gallery, the publisher. And technology demolishes that wall and basically says, 'Self-promote or die.' And that is a bad head for any sort of artist to be forced into.

I'm not a sexist.

The technology I like is the American paperback edition of 'Freedom.' I can spill water on it, and it would still work! So it's pretty good technology.

One reason that birds matter - ought to matter - is that they are our last, best connection to a natural world that is otherwise receding. They're the most vivid and widespread representatives of the Earth as it was before people arrived on it.