I liked the education. I liked people learning things all around me and I liked going to people's classes.

I read a lot. I liked a tremendous number of poets and writers. The person whose work I liked the most was Joyce.

As an older person, I do feel an obligation to tell the story about what was really happening in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, as I saw it.

I was a fantastic student until ten, and then my mind began to wander.

We write about what we don't know about what we know.

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 don't have any degrees. I went to Hunter College one year and New York University another year. It's just on the basis of my books that I've been hired at any of the places I've been.