I have spoken to expert audiences occasionally, but then no audience is expert over the whole range of things I want to explore.

When my mother left her second husband, she wrote her autobiography and presented it to him for his approval.

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.

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

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

The self is an oral society in which the present is constantly running a dialogue with the past and the future inside of one skin.

My way of thinking is very particular and concrete. It doesn't follow a continuous path.