I Don't Understand Why I'm Not Dead.

I Hate America. I Hate This Country. It’s Just Big Ideas, And Stories, And People Dying, And People Like You. The White Cracker Who Wrote The National Anthem Knew What He Was Doing. He Set The Word 'free' To A Note So High Nobody Can Reach It. That Was Deliberate. Nothing On Earth Sounds Less Like Freedom To Me. You Come To Room 1013 Over At The Hospital, I'll Show You America. Terminal, Crazy And Mean. I Live In America, That’s Hard Enough, I Don’t Have To Love It. You Do That. Everybody’s Got To Love Something.

I Grew Up In A Small Southern Town, And There Were White People And Black People. Coming To New York To Go To Columbia, Every Time I Went Into The Subway I Was Absolutely Astounded Because You See People From All Over The World Who Actually Live Here - Who Aren't Just Here As Tourists.

One Has To Have A Complicated Kind Of Optimism. You Can't Refuse To Look At How Horrible Things Are.

I Go Into Any Movie That's Historical Fiction Thinking, 'ok, I'm Here To Watch A Work Of Art, Something Delivering A Series Of Opinions, And If It's A Good Work Of Art, These Opinions Become So Deeply Embedded In Complexity And Richness That I Won't Even Be Bothered By The Opinions. I'll Make My Own Mind Up.'

Who Knows Better Than Artists How Much Ugliness There Is On The Way To Beauty, How Many Ghastly, Mortifying Missteps, How Many Days Of Granitic Blockheadedness And Dismaying Ineptitude There Is On The Way To Accomplishment, How Partial All Accomplishment Is, How Incomplete?