Jonathan Lethem

Nerds are just deep, and neurotic, fans. Needy fans. We're all nerds, on one subject or another.

Discomfort is very much part of my master plan.

The arts and a belief in the values of the civil rights movement, in the overwhelming virtue of diversity, these were our religion. My parents worshipped those ideals.

Another thing that freaks me out is time. Time is like a book. You have a beginning, a middle and an end. It's just a cycle.

Influenced by Pete Seeger and the Weavers, McLean proudly wore the mantle of troubadour in the early 1970s, when 'American Pie' topped the Billboard charts, and has never shed the cape.

There are some aspects of the diagram that I wish I had expressed a little more clearly.