I didn't intend. The word "intend" is the wrong word for what I do. It's just that it's something you do, and you can't not do. If you want to do it, and you don't intend to, you do it anyway. The word "intend" is wrong. The word "pressure" is right. It's like any art form.

I might write four lines or I might write twenty. I subtract and I add until I really hit something I want to do. You don't always whittle down, sometimes you whittle up.

To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night.

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

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 begin by writing paragraphs that don’t have an immediate relation to a plot. The sound of the story comes first.

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