I play American football every Saturday, which I find calming.

You don't have to even see the common man anymore if you don't want to! Only through the telescope on your yacht.

You are skilled. I exhort you.

If you're part of any kind of writerly community, some of those people will have gone through MFA programs, and their thinking leaks into yours. So whatever changes MFAs have made to the culture, it's to the culture as a whole. It can't be pinned down to individual books in a way that some people would like to do.

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

Poetry might be more about the eternal verities, the essence of the human soul, and - although it's reductive to say so - fiction has perhaps been more about the differences between the unconstrained world of the imagination and the realities you run into, day-to-day, when you're riding your donkey.

For many years I didn't have health insurance.