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

I can't imagine having the courage to ask a publisher to do a whole book of my poems.

I always write the best that I can. And I won't publish it until I have done it right.

The people who make reality are angry peasants with old cannon shells wired together, an anti-vehicle device.

It's hard to read real fiction. It takes time. It takes a sustained attention.

If you can propose a memoir, even if you are eighteen years old - and what do you remember? What are you memeing? If you can propose a memoir, I believe someone will pay you to write it. And you will get a contract for nonfiction. And if it is about victimology in one way or another than you'll get more money. It's a sensation.

History is beautiful stories or scary stories, yeah.