I have found myself writing poetry shortly after I retired. Which I hadn't done in forty years.

I enjoy going to campuses and reading and doing a class or teaching and then running away and not having to grade papers.

My heroes are people like Philip Levine, who is simply like a god to me, as a writer. And he is a very good man, too.

I'm not a philosopher. I am the next thing to a jock, which is a novelist.

History is beautiful stories or scary stories, yeah.

I always want to read Gore Vidal's nonfiction. Because everything he writes is an essay and it's worth reading.

I always had good students.