Success makes opportunities and so many of those "opportunities" are actually exemptions - from hardship, from unfriendliness, from struggle.

In fact unrestrained capitalism is quite cruel and the cost is on the individual human, on his or her grace.

I turned 54 this year and I find myself feeling like I'm in a bit of a race to get down on paper the way I really feel about life - or the way it has presented to me. And because it has presented to me very beautifully, this is hard. It is technically very hard to show positive manifestations.

I used to joke about this but I've recently realized that I really believe it: I spent many years training myself to write very slowly for pretty good money. So the idea of writing really quickly for free offends me.

I grew up in Chicago on the South Side, and had a ton of freedom, just did whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. At the risk of sounding dopey, I would say it was blissful.

In a certain way, we're always toggling back and forth between the absolute and the relative, if that makes sense.

I actually believe that a lot of what people call originality has to do with persistence in the craft.