Writing on a computer feels like a recipe for writer's block. I can type so fast that I run out of thoughts, and then I sit there and look at the words on the screen, and move them around, and never get anywhere. Whereas in a notebook I just keep plodding along, slowly, accumulating sentences, sometimes even surprising myself.

Most writers, most books, you have no idea whether it was a dollar or a million dollars.

For me, the process always has to be pretty intense. I could never write just two or three days a week. It had to be every day.

Other things awaited. It was good to be young and to know it for once. So much unfolding to do.

For many years I didn't have health insurance.

It remained an open question, how much sympathy love could stand.

I mean, first, almost all writers these days teach because they don't make enough money publishing to live on, to support themselves - people like Tobias Wolff, Anne Beattie, Amy Hempel, Stuart Dybek; a lot of short story writers, for one thing.