Ms. Morrison: Ummm, how do you survive whole–I can’t do this quickly, for one–how can you survive whole and when we’re victims of something, um. You know that’s a nice fat, eastern/western philosophical question about ‘how do you get through’?

Sometimes you don’t survive whole, you just survive in part. But the grandeur of life is that attempt, it’s not about that solution.

It is about being as fearless as one can, behaving as beautifully as one can, under completely impossible circumstances. It’s that, that makes it elegant. Good is more interesting. More complex, more demanding.

Evil is silly. It may be horrible but at the same time it’s not a compelling idea: it’s predictable, it needs a tuxedo, it needs blood, it needs fingernails, it’s all that costume, in order to get anybody’s attention.

But the opposite, which is survival, blossoming, endurance, those things are just more compelling intellectually, if not spiritually and they certainly are spiritually. This is more fascinating job.

“This photograph of Joni Mitchell skating across Lake Mendota in Wisconsin is unreal to me. I love the negative space in the photo, and how it gives the sense of total freedom.”