At first I’ll think of stuff in my head for a while. The more I think of an idea, the more promising it is— it just naturally occupies space in my brain. Then I start making notes with pen and paper. If it’s a story, it’s more like a moment, or just it’s kind of a more fleeting idea. And if it’s a novel, it’s something that I can see approaching in a lot of different ways, and sticking with for two or three years. I might write a scene or two and just kind of see how it feels. Then I will type an outline. That’s when I really feel like I have a path forward, even though I don’t feel like I have to stick to the outline, but it is very reassuring to me to have it.

No. I think when I first started writing songs, I was approaching it more literally or narratively in the beginning, but through observing some of my close friends and some of my heroes write, I pretty quickly shifted into at least starting the process from a more subconscious space, or a more instinctual space. And I’ve really come to believe that it’s all there. It’s all already there, and if you can just kind of open the window and step out of the way, at least at the beginning of the process, with your subconscious mind, you can unearth so much raw material, and then go back and sift through that and shape it.

So I started with this idea of could we do private equity totally differently than had been done? One of the major features of what we do is something called demand aggregation, where we go to corporations and what we call the CPO, the purchasing officers of those - chief purchasing officers. We developed a council of Fortune 500 companies.

A little of both. Sometimes I have a skeleton of something. For both essays and poems, the conception process is very similar. So there definitely were some essays that started as poems. It’s just about realizing what the best container is for the thought. Sometimes I need more of an argument, even if it’s an argument with myself, but what’s cool is that I can think about utilizing those techniques no matter what form. It’s about exercising, learning how an essay thinks, and then being able to apply that to a poem if I need to or want to.

So I find that teaching and the students keep life going, and I would never accept any position in which somebody has invented a happy solution for me where I don’t have to teach.  Never.

There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was.  The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.

the colonel said I shouldn't tell them how the neutrons work and all the details because we want to keep things separate, so just tell them what to do to keep it safe.

We'd walk in the canyons, and we'd often walk with Bethe, and Von Neumann, and Bacher. It was a great pleasure.

So I got this new attitude.  Now that I am burned out and I’ll never accomplish anything, I’ve got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I’m going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.

I don’t believe I can really do without teaching.  The reason is, I have to have something so that when I don’t have any ideas and I’m not getting anywhere I can say to myself, “At least I’m living; at least I’m doing something; I’m making some contribution”—it’s just psychological.