There's a moral force in a sentence when it comes out right. It speaks the writer's will to live.

The best moments involve a loss of control. It's a kind of rapture, and it can happen with words and phrases fairly often - completely surprising combinations that make a higher kind of sense, that come to you out of nowhere. But rarely for extended periods, for paragraphs and pages - I think poets must have more access to this state than novelists do.

I've always felt that my subject was living in dangerous times.

Writers, some of us, may tend to see things before other people do, things that are right there but aren't noticed in the way that a writer might notice.

I hate my life. I'm at the point where I want to hear about other people's lives. it's like switching from fiction to biography.

That's why people take vacations. No to relax or find excitement or see new places. To escape the death that exists in routine things.

I'm not reclusive at all. Just private.