When a writer's whole being is poured into a piece of work, there is never enough. The feeling of finally getting to the end of a piece of work, of making it as good as you can at that moment, is more of a relief than anything else, and then you wait for reviews.

When I started meditating, even doing yoga, I felt like it was hard to allow myself to develop any other kind of practice [outside of Judaism], like I was somehow being untrue to my heritage, and that was something I had to get over and was probably the greatest revelation to me.

As a writer we are our own instruments; we need to protect our instrument, because no one will protect it if we don't.

How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'

If I waited to be in the mood to write, I'd barely have a chapbook of material to my name. Who would ever be in the mood to write? Do marathon runners get in the mood to run? Do teachers wake up with the urge to lecture? I don't know, but I doubt it. My guess is that it's the very act that is generative. The doing of the thing that makes possible the desire for it.

The truth is in the present moment.

When I was starting out there was no Internet, there wasn't this sense that you could be connected to other writers around the world. And that created a kind of innocence, or parochial quality, even in NYC.