Doing a life study while drunk and in the process of being seduced is never a formula for quality art.

Every age fraught with discord and danger seems to spawn a leader meant only for that age, a political giant whose absence, in retrospect, seems inconceivable when the history of that age is written.

Writing, Im convinced, should be a subversive activity - frowned on by the authorities - and not one cooed over and praised beyond common sense by some teacher.

Words are the light and sound of our existence, the heat lightning by which the night is illuminated.

Religion seems to have always offered us that false duality ... the silences of infinite space or the cozy comfort of inner certainty.

I loved almost everything about being a teacher, but I was an unusual teacher

The best advice that an accomplished writer could give a beginning writer is probably, "Find your slide and then grease it." Almost every writer that wants a rewarding career, in terms of money and status and number of readers, finally finds a certain genre or certain style that he or she sticks with until reaching a critical mass of readership. And I've violated this from the get-go.