I'm a dilettante by temperament. I don't have any expectation.

I've never had a stupid student in my life. I never look down on my students. I never thought, "Look at these people." I might argue with them and I think that some of them might have misconceptions - that they might be infected by the intellectual laziness that is the foundation of American popular culture, and of capitalism, if you wish. But part of my job as a teacher is to work with that - against that.

I had an epiphany: I was a loser.

Everyone operates within their own domain and obviously those domains overlap to a great extent.

I want to make money, and I would like to have a lot of money, but I still believe that the only reason to write is that somehow it will make something or somebody better.

I gradually became aware that my interiority was inseparable from my exteriority, that the geography of my city was the geography of my soul.

I write and read with the assumption that literature contains knowledge of human experience that is not available otherwise.