Being a father teaches you very quickly that you are not the center of your own universe. That’s one of the gifts of having to wipe poop!

I love being a father. I think there’s a great lie that we tell kids that pleasure creates happiness. Young people think: “Oh, if I get this, I’ll be happy.” But in a lot of ways it’s meeting your responsibilities that makes you happy. For me, I’ve just found that feeling like I’ve done a good job with the kids is a real source of happiness for me.

Boy, being a parent is a hard job, I think, because in parenting you want your kids to like you. Too much sometimes. It’s a hard line to find between doing what’s necessary to give them the tools to be good kids and make good decisions and all that, versus just completely not giving them a chance to accomplish anything because you do everything for them. I kind of feel like it’s okay if these kids go out and make a few mistakes, because they’re going to learn. The last ten years have been interesting, because I’m a stepparent to three kids, and I’m a father to two kids, an older and a younger. And it’s a real interesting dynamic.

There is nothing more important to me than my children and focusing on them. It’s the quality of time with my children, not the quantity of time that I’ve found to be important.

I’m always afraid of false certainty about things

I feel some sort of chemistry with the subject.…The bar for me is when it’s interesting enough that I would talk about it on my own time.

Carrie helped me keep to a strict rhythm, but all the essays took shape in very idiosyncratic ways.

I wrote while listening to Caribou, Kamasi Washington, Frank Ocean, Mitski. Towards the end, a lot of Talk Talk.

I think it’s so good to abandon projects. I never feel sad about not trying to publish that novel.

It’s a gift to let yourself be changed by a person, and for a person to allow you to change them.