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

There is a long time in me between knowing and telling.

You know the mind is an astonishing, long-living, erotic thing.

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

That heartbreaking moment when you finish an amazing book, and you are forced to return to reality.

You come to doing what you do by not being able to do something.