“I was always told that because I was born in the nineties, I couldn’t appreciate Michael Jackson—but I really did! I bought all I could, and I tried dancing like him for a while. I was horrible.”

“I’ve written about 3,000 pages, so either it’s more than one book or it needs a lot of editing. I’m in a race with Proust.”

“My daughter tells me, ‘She’s not my sister, she’s a bird.’ But I think in fact there’s jealousy there.”

A cross section of the crowd outside the immensely popular Gagosian show.

“I’m an extreme bohemian. I barter for room and board with my roommate.”

“It’s kind of like a classical look, harking back to the seventies, when men were allowed to have hair on their face and bodies.”

“I’ve been taking vocal lessons to get more into pop—I’m a way better singer than I thought I was going to be.”

“If I get in a cab, they’ll say, ‘Where to, ma’am?’ or ‘Hi, lady’—stuff like that. At first it was kind of annoying, but you get used to it and laugh.”

“There’s a site called Mixi with 190 Japanese parents from Brooklyn. We meet in the basement of the public library and sing Japanese songs.”

“My girlfriend was like, ‘Fashion’s always going to be here, but you have eight prime years as a dancer, so you’d better use them.’ ”