I realized that there was an intellectual content in music, a kind of thinking, that I would never be able to hear.

I think it's harder to avoid reflection on those larger patterns of history or society when they so insistently call into question your right to exist.

I realized that there was an intellectual content in music, a kind of thinking, that I would never be able to hear.

I'm not sure I can articulate any principles behind the decisions about what to cut and what to keep.

My life has had a lot of fits and starts: before I studied literature at all I was a musician, and began undergrad as a conservatory student. I started studying literature in my third year of college, when I took a poetry course with James Longenbach that was pretty extraordinary. It changed my life.

I don't think I'm qualified to answer questions about happiness. But I guess I'd say that I don't think you ever get to put to bed something like a search for order, or any other element of your sensibility, however much you'd like to.

For me, music was always a second language. I didn't have a musical background, and I started studying very late, at fourteen.