Oh, a bookshop. Why not pop in and buy a little Kant? And perhaps just a quarter-pound of Kafka. Don't bother to wrap it, thanks. I'll eat it here.

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

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.

The education of young people is narrowing. They cannot have the scope they used to have. They are being taught in high school by people earnest, still, but maybe less well-prepared than we would want them to be - but not because they are stupid or churlish.

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?"

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

I always had good students.