Time perception is very much about how you sequence your activities, how many activities you layer overtop of others, and the types of gaps, if any, you leave in between activities.

Art was always my main focus; I fell into writing by accident in the 1980s, writing magazine articles to pay for my studio. I have to put myself into the position of writing; sometimes it doesn't work, and sometimes it works great.

Unhappiness is something we are never taught about; we are taught to expect happiness, but never a Plan B to use to use when the happiness doesn't arrive.

Most of us have only two or three genuinely interesting moments in our lives; the rest is filler.

If our subconscious was attractive, we wouldn't have to bury it down deep within us.

I miss the silliness of the Nineties. What would society be like if 9/11 never happened? If that silliness was extended forever?

Nature is one great big wood-chipper. Sooner or later, everything shoots out the other end in a spray of blood, bones and hair.

I like doing radio because it's so intimate. The moment people hear your voice, you're inside there heads, not only that, you're in there laying eggs.

Sometimes the best lighting of all is a power failure.

I always thought of words as art supplies.

It's difficult to speak with beautiful people. No matter how hard you try to pretend otherwise, you still want them to like you.

TV didn't kill radio, it just added something new to the mix.

When Donald Duck traded his wings for arms, was he trading up or trading down?

Whatever happened to books? Suddenly everybody's talking about these 100-hour movies called 'Breaking Bad'. People are talking about TV the same way they used to talk about novels back in the 1980s. I like to think I hang out with some pretty smart people, but all they talk about is 'Breaking Bad.'

You wait for fate to bring about the changes in life which you should be bringing about by yourself.

I think as a species we're not designed to be able to think more than one year into the future - if that. Even trying to imagine one year from now makes most people feel like they've been given a huge boring chunk of homework that's too hard to do.

Is there anything in the world more annoyingly creepy than an unspoken dress code?

Fashion only seems to make sense if it's rooted in some dimension of history or if it feels like a continuation of an idea.

For many people, myself included, the end of the world is happening all the time! It is a form of criticality that paradoxically gives us hope for change and improvement.

You're smarter than TV. So what?

When we constantly ask for miracles, we're unraveling the fabric of the world. A world of continuous miracles would not be a world, it would be a cartoon.

It's fun to sentimentalize the 20th-century lifestyle and the 20th-century brain, but it helps nobody, it makes you look ancient, there's no going back, and you'd be miserable if you did.

Some people think fashion is frivolous but it's not... it's just that some ideas come and go quickly, and that's the nature of the language of fashion.

I grew up in airports and on air bases. I know what flying and airports can be. And most airports make me feel like we're about three per cent better than ants. Especially U.S. airports. They're zoos. All civility is gone.

Sometimes it feels as if everything in life is just something we haul into the grave.

If someone decides to be a musician now, it means because there is no hope of money at the end of it, it means they really want to be a musician. And if someone is writing now, there is no hope for money at the end of it.

'Stupidity' defines the mental state wherein we acknowledge that we've never been smarter as individuals and yet somehow we've never felt stupider. We now collectively inhabit a state of stupidity.

Those Catholics, they really nab you when you're young. They sear you. They sear you; they do.

Fondue sets, martini shakers and juicing machines: three things the world could live completely without.

The reason the future feels odd is because of its unpredictability. If the future didn't feel weirdly unexpected, then something would be wrong.

It's a cliche, but true, that writing is intensely solitary and at times really lonely. I sit in one room and talk to squirrels and blue jays all day.

When I look at my daily schedule, I feel like a trout flopping about on a dock, drowning in the air. Some people are ruthless with their schedules. Not me. I wing it.

A vast percentage of the human race is literally not wired neurologically to get irony. Well more than half of humanity takes life at face value, which is to me terrifying.

You can never become rich unless you like rich people.

If a building looks better under construction than it does when finished, then it's a failure.

If you don't change, then what's the point of anything happening to you?

I kind of wonder if creativity is all morphing into one big thing that's not even art, but something universal and bigger.

Tofu hot dogs are actually scarier than real hot dogs. It's like wanting the worst possible meat product without even the thrill of it actually being meat.

Given the infinite number of coincidences that could happen, very few ever actually do. The universe exists in a coincidence-hating state of anti-fluke.

Who wants to talk on the phone? If you want to talk to me, text me. Or if we must, let's meet in person.

I think the killers get far too much attention.

High school is such a shared experience in North American culture.

There's a lot to be said for having a small manageable dream.

You spend a much larger part of your life being old, not young.

In our heads we're all about 33 years old.

Quick. Name ten dead redheads.

Americans are a quarter of a billion people who have almost nothing in common except for the fact they've been told they have lots in common.

Canadians can easily 'pass for American' as long as we don't accidentally use metric measurements or apologize when hit by a car.

Make your goals big and broad enough so that they never become answered prayers and boomerang to curse you.

Fate is for losers.