MARK TWAIN
Robert: "I think he was a good commentator on the late 19th century. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn don’t do that much for me. But his later stuff, he gets more cranky as he gets older. His critique gets more interesting. When I was 15, I read What Is Man? and it made a profound impression on me. It changed my life. It’s all about predestination versus freewill. He was a big believer in predestination. He didn’t think we had any free will. And he puts down religion and everything. I was, at that time, still a Catholic believer when I read that. My brother Charles and I found that book on the floor in an abandoned house along with some other moldy books. So I took it home and read it. Afterward, I told my aunt about it. She was a strong Catholic -- the whole family was Catholic -- no one ever questioned anything. So I told my aunt about it and she said, 'Oh, can I read that? That sounds interesting.' So I lent it to her and about a week later she was over at our house and she said, 'You know that book you lent me? I burned it.' [laughs] So that’s my experience with Mark Twain."
MOZART
Robert: "The music just doesn’t do much for me. I haven’t really played close attention to Mozart’s music. I love the movie Amedeus about him, but the actual music, nnnaaaah. That sort of classical symphony type of stuff doesn’t interest me very much."
SPAIN RODRIGUEZ
Robert: "Spain’s my buddy, my old pal, one of my best friends. I’ve learned a lot from Spain. I greatly admire his artwork. He is such a strong, committed, communist, left-wing guy. I know I can always count on him to give me a clear, concise Marxist theory or reaction or viewpoint on whatever’s going on in the world, which I appreciate very much actually. I’ve learned a lot from him in that way. He’s a little too pro-Stalin for me. But I’ve argued about that with him. He once got very angry at me for saying that Stalin was as bad as Hitler. He didn’t like that.
"I said, 'Why? What’s the...