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.

I'm an amateur, so I read what's interesting to me.

Good art is a form of prayer. It's a way to say what is not sayable.

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

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

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