I like to look at the interface between words and pictures and wonder about which comes first, a sort of chicken-or-egg type of question.

In Chicago, if you tell someone you're a writer, they look at you suspiciously - as if to say "yeah, right." In New York, people don't question the idea. If you say you're a writer, that's what you are.

I think the more stability a person has, the more they can follow esoteric or intellectual pursuits.

I wonder if books become in essence "files" if people wouldn't write them differently. I'm used to writing print books and I enjoy the slowness of the whole process. It makes me more deliberate about everything I say.

The postcard is sacred to me. It makes me sad that no one sends them very much anymore because of email and texting. I still like to buy them, but they've lost their original function and now just seem like reminders or mementos of what they used to be.

In the past things were either in your head (subjective, imaginary, fantasy) or else they were part of the outside world - cold, hard, concrete materialistic reality. If you want to look at it in terms of poetry, there was surrealism and objectivism. Now there's the veil of the virtual in between. The old opposition between inner and outer doesn't quite capture it, especially as it contains elements of both. It's real but not concrete.

In a machine, every part has a function. In a poem, every word needs to be there.