It's not that I sit down and write great stuff without thinking, not at all. Most of it is terrible. But the stuff that feels fun and fresh to me tends to happen fairly unthinkingly.

For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of battle. It has the power to give grief or universality that lends it a youthful beauty.

I think that when we look at something that's well acted and a story that's well told, it allows us to be a mirror of who we are as human beings and as a culture, and offers a glimpse of where we're headed.

Getting the player emotionally involved is the holy grail. We try to make players forget they're playing a game. We want them to live the experience and suspend disbelief.

It helps me to learn things in different languages, even if it's just phonetically, and to make myself vulnerable to other audiences by trying to reflect back to them the genius of their own cultures, and to do that, oftentimes, in new jazz settings, new arrangements. It's a way to show respect.

My subject matter was a genuine sort of experience that came out of my life, particularly the American world in which I was privileged to be . . . . I would really think of the bakery counters, of the way the counter was lit, where the pies were placed, but I wanted just a piece of the experience. From when I worked in restaurants . . . [it was] always poetic to me.