... but every person who does serious time with a keyboard is attempting to translate his version of the world into words so that he might be understood.

No matter how many compromises were made along the way, no matter what happens in the future, a book is a thing to behold.

Asking for advice about what you should write is a little like asking for help getting dressed. I can you tell you what I think looks good, but you have to wear it. And as every fashion victim knows, very few people look good in everything.

But editors are still the world's readers. And thus the eyes of the world.

The world doesn't fully make sense until the writer has secured his version of it on the page. And the act of writing is strangely more lifelike than life.

I wondered if I was just the sum of my brain scan, little dots clustered in my frontal lobe. Is that where the poems came from?.

Indeed, the great paradox of the writer's life is how much time he spends alone trying to connect with other people.