Tacked above my desk are photos of artists I admire - Hopper, Sargent, Twain - and postcards from beloved bookstores where I've spent all my time and money - Tattered Cover, Elliot Bay, Harvard Bookstore.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
For most of my career I illustrated books for other people.
I have tons of art books. I have them all over the place. They are in my car, in my bag, and in my studio. There are books around me all the time.
I have some beautiful 20th-century drawings and a few paintings, but I'm not a collector, and I'm not particularly attached to objects.
One, I have a wonderful publisher, Black Sparrow Press; as long as they exist, they will keep me in print. And they claim they sell very respectable numbers of my books, so I guess, and it's true, every place I go, my books are in libraries and on bookshelves.
I collect books, primarily first-edition 20th-century fiction.
Your library is your portrait.
A lot of my time is spent reading antique or out-of-print books of reference.
I love that works of art are printed so that anyone can buy them. The variety of what they put on little postcards astounds me.
I'm always taking pictures and travelling with a camera and have so many photos that I've done a book.
I keep three framed photographs on my desk: the latest school picture of my daughter; a photo of my wife getting her diploma from the University of Chicago; and Lytton Strachey, looking serenely self-possessed.