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

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

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

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.

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.

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

First-book novelists and storywriters haven't yet failed and so it's easier to publish them - you can gamble on a success. Whereas someone who has written four books that are highly literary and demanding and require you as a reader. They may not be republished.