Let's look at what the books are that are being produced. More and more they are being made like movies. To sell. They are being tested out.

What I try to do is read stuff that won't deal with the dangerous dark things I hope I am writing about.

The culture is with some rapidity fearing its imagination. I don't know why. Imagination is not of interest.

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

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 don't think the world is particularly responsive to - our world, the culture we are in, to art right now.

Never use 'submit' as a verb for sending work to magazine or book publishers; say 'offer,' and never, ever submit. Keep your knees unbent. Be brave.