Well, I'm proud of my gender. I think, you know, and I've said this to my Berkeley colleagues this morning, but my feeling is that I think among women and girls that, you know, sometimes there's a sense that no matter what they do that their work will not be recognised the way it would be if they were a man. And I just … I hope that this prize and this recognition changes that at least a little bit, and that it's encouraging to other women who are in science, or even in other fields, to realise that, you know, their work can be honoured and that their work can have a real impact.

Yes, I do. I do, but I were part company with certain schools of writers that I do not believe that it is necessarily the duty of the writer. I don’t believe that. If a writer is true to his vocation, to his or her vocation, the very process of creativity enlarges these human horizons. It provides insights, even when you’re not writing, when your writing’s not dealing with a concrete political situation.

Now according to me, and this is my cosmology scheme, which I'm having trouble persuading the cosmologists about, is that when the universe is rid of pretty well all its matter, it in a certain sense forgets how big it is. Now that's a crazy idea, but you see if you don't have any mass around you don't have any way of scaling the size of the universe, and so it in effect becomes the big bang of the next aeon as I'm calling it – A E O N. So according to my scheme, the universe as we currently understand it, which is from big bang, and then there's this inflationary phase which I don't believe in, which is supposed to take place very, very early on, and then the universe has this more sedate expansion, and then it has another exponential expansion, and that's it. According to me, that's not it. It morphs into the next big bang.

Remember that the resentment and the anger leveled at the United States is not leveled against Americans as Americans. It is leveled against a particular policy followed by a particular administration, and change the policy or maybe change the administration, and you will find, I mean, that there is very little anti-Americanism in the world. There is a lot of — I mean, there is a lot of anger at an America that has been arrogant and an America that believe it is good, go it alone. You know, your unilateralism where you went to the United Nations thinking that they would just endorse your view, and when they said no, you said go jump in the lake, and you went and you did your own thing, and you landed in a huge mess. Well, people don’t want to say we told you so, you know, because you realize, I mean, after 9/11, most of the world was deeply — I mean, America was held in the highest. People really felt deeply for you, and I’m sure you all felt loved, and you dissipated it in next to no time. You know, I mean, chop, chop, chop, and it disappeared, but it shows, you know, it isn’t that there is an ingrained hatred of America. There isn’t.

Do it. It is the hardest thing you will ever do and it will bring you immense joy. You won’t be alone, there is an entire community here for you.

I understand my definition does not meet most people’s definition of disability.

I’m reading an odd collection of books that should not go together, but of course they do. Georgina Kleege: What Blindness Brings To Art; Fred Moten: Black and Blur; Theri Pickens: Black Madness :: Mad Blackness.

Laurel and I collaborated with director Katherine Helen Fisher and other talented artists on the dance film REVEL IN YOUR BODY and that continues to screen all over the world

What I think you’re asking is, “Does it change the movements on stage if you have people come and watch it?” I would say, yes it can, but not always. Not every comment will lead me to go back to the stage and change something… but it can. Often you don’t know how stuff is landing, so it can be helpful to get a viewer’s perspective. Since I’m in the piece, I’ll never be able to see what it looks like from the outside.

My dance heroes include Kitty Lunn, one of my first teachers, Marc Brew, current Artistic Director of AXIS Dance Company, Judy Smith founding member and Artistic Director Emerita of AXIS, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar the founder of Urban Bush Women. They are all innovators and activists in their own way.