I can manage a prose format as long as I keep closer to Laurence Sterne than to Henry James.

There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation.

I am quite unsatisfied by the distinctions between the oral and literate.

Stories are different every time you tell them - they allow so many possible narratives.

For several centuries what has passed for song in literary circles was any text that looked like the lyrics for a commonplace melodic setting.

It's hard being a hostage in somebody else's mouth - or a character in somebody else's novel.

I was very committed to the process of composing, working at poems, putting things together and taking them apart like some kind of experimental filmmaker.