"It seems to me that one thing we should be trying to keep in mind these days is the phrase, “It could be worse.” This book shows us a much-worse time and its tragic effects on a group of tender friends/lovers/artists. We should energetically protect our system, and try to heal the toxic divisiveness afflicting us, and resist the lies being routinely promulgated, from above and on social media, because when a system fails, the victim is human decency – all these dear hearts suddenly living reduced, fearful, degrading lives. We have, as Paul Simon put it, “lived so well, so long” that we may be in danger of forgetting that the results of chaos are real."

"I read it first as an 18-year old and, just like a meteor from a distant galaxy, it hit my tender young brain and dug its way deep into its gray material. It has nestled there ever since, radiating with beauty and wonder, irony and horror. This autumn I visited the ground zero of The Master and Margarita, the famous Patriarch Ponds in Moscow where Lucifer himself, in the guise of the Professor Woland, makes his first appearance in the book and sets the whole story in motion. For a second I wondered if he would come for me too. But then I remembered that Old Nick owned my soul already, having given it as a toy to Bulgakov all those years ago."

"Second choice is a band out of, I believe, the Minneapolis area that I saw out here in Los Angeles recently. I love these guys. They’re called The Jayhawks and they have a song called “Blue”. And that was actually featured in the other movie I did, which is called The Hammer, a million years ago. I just love that song. It’s just such a tender, beautiful song, and it inspired me in a certain point of my life, just to really sit back and try to assess my life. It’s one of those songs: put it on, light a candle, dim the lights, and just sit there and give life a good going over in your skull, while you listen to Jayhawk’s “Blue”."