Hindsight, usually looked down upon, is probably as valuable as foresight, since it does include a few facts.

This hill crossed with broken pines and maples lumpy with the burial mounds of uprooted hemlocks (hurricane of '38) out of their rotting hearts generations rise trying once more to become the forest just beyond them tall enough to be called trees in their youth like aspen a bouquet of young beech is gathered they still wear last summer's leaves the lightest brown almost translucent how their stubbornness has decorated the winter woods.

I didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty.

I should have written more. I should have written more during the period when I just liked so much doing the political work in the streets.

Literature, fiction, poetry, whatever, makes justice in the world. That's why it almost always has to be on the side of the underdog.

I do lots of reading and speaking at many universities about literature and also about politics, which is as much a part of my life as the literature.

Art's too long and life's too short.