My second novel, "Good Benito", was not finished. I wished that I had spent another year with it.

A writer is someone who has a one-man tent in the desert and occasionally he sees the footprint of an other writer - in the form of a review or something.

Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free. Over time, some have determined that the only way to live is to die. In death, a man or a woman is free of the weight of the past [and the future].

I think e-mail is representative of our fast food mentality in the United States, where everything has gotten faster and faster, and we're required to respond to inputs more quickly with less time for thought and reflection. I believe that we need to slow down.

It's exciting having a student who is not used to expressing their emotional side and bringing that out in them and see that developing and helping to nurture that. That's an exciting thing. In a class of fifteen there are usually two very good writers, equal to good student writers anywhere in the country. Those two make the class wonderful.

The world is moving faster and faster, but where are we going?I think one of the reasons why things are getting blurry is because there is not much meaning.

I've taken a philosophical position on e-mail. Although I think it's a wonderful communication technology, and it has a lot of good uses, it is abused quite a lot.