My first MFA was in poetry, and it was very much part of a professional trajectory leading to life as a professor. But in my second and third years at Harvard, I realized I didn't want an academic life.

I went back to graduate school because I wanted to avoid being a professional, to try to piece together a life that would let me avoid the tenure race and full-time teaching.

I realized, that the life of a musician, even of a very lucky, very successful musician, wasn't really the life I wanted: I hate travel, I hate living out of suitcases, I hate the constant anxiety of being on stage.

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.

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.

Being a high school teacher was wonderful, but unsustainable: I needed a way out.