People do not read, by and large. They watch television.

If there is some blood on the pages then you have some readership.

We are herding the young in that direction so that they are not sitting still and contemplating, Goddamn it, a page of exquisite prose by Charles Dickens, which is filled with rage about poverty and the need of a household to survive. That's not in the table for consideration now. And people don't understand that beautiful rage of Dickens because they don't share it. They haven't got time to worry about an oppressed culture, a subclass.

I read a lot of poetry. I read some history.

Nonfiction, for the most part, is facts, and it's "how I was mistreated. I was mistreated. Were you mistreated? Weren't we all mistreated?"

When you are writing a character, what the character says is obviously crucial. But what the character doesn't say is absolutely as important as his words.

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.