the notebooks do provide a pretty good snapshot of a creative brain moving very fast, while serving as an instrument of grounding and refinement.

“My notebook is the microbial fungus of ideas and images I draw on when I’m writing,” he said when we first spoke.

Adam Moss: I was hoping we could discuss the relationship of anxiety to drive, because I think it’s an important note for the book, and people often, at least implicitly, bring it up. And you’re candid and articulate enough to— Ira Glass: Nice flattery! As a fellow interviewer, I’m respecting the flattery. All right. I need a harsh deadline to get

Sometimes I feel I would have twice as many followers if I learned to play the game better. Other times, I don’t know. I truly wish that I could just check out most of the time right now.

I had to start writing. I wrote an almost entire first draft of the book, and it was not good. I wrote it like two and a half times. And I couldn’t get there. There was one moment—I was supposed to have a phone call with the editor one morning. I was so desperate and sad—at my wit’s end, I just didn’t know what to do. The draft I had sent her, she

I wrote, “You might be wondering if I’m stalking you. Well, the answer is yes. I’m obsessed with your work—obsessed, and I have a secret dream, about to be not so secret, that we can collaborate and that you’ll illustrate the cookbook, let’s call it better than a cookbook, that I’m starting to work on. I love your work, you are the Maira Kalman[ ]

Then Michael wrote Cooked, and his agent—this was Binky Urban, a really powerful agent—read the part of the draft which described me, and she said, “Oh wow, what a charismatic character. Does she have any book ideas?” And he said, “Well, yes actually, she has an idea.” So I told her what I was thinking, and she said, “Yes, this is a good idea but i

On the trip, we were talking and I told him, “I’ve been putting this pressure on myself to come up with an idea of a book to write that would be groundbreaking.” He said, “Write the book you already know.” I said, “I guess the book should just be this philosophy that I have: salt, oil, acid, heat.” He said, “No one’s ever said that before. It’s a g

When you’re working, there’s so much self-loathing. Everyone feels like their stuff is awful. When I was at CalArts I was studying painting—I’m a terrible painter—but I remember there’s a stage of a painting that just looks like a mess and then all of a sudden it becomes a painting. Movies are like that too. Magically it starts to take shape. Now I