writing is like being in love. You never get better at it or learn more about it. The day you think you do is the day you lose it. Robert Frost called his work a lover's quarrel with the world. It's ongoing. It has neither a beginning nor an end. You don't have to worry about learning things. The fire of one's art burns all the impurities from the vessel that contains it.

Neither our own passing nor the passing of an era is a tragedy, no matter how much we would like to think it is.

Today, there are more opportunities for writers in terms of access to larger success, but it's more difficult to publish a literary novel in the lower ranges. In other words, you almost have to hit a home run. You can hit a triple, maybe, but nobody's interested in a single.

Write for the love of your art. Someplace down the road, the money, the fame, they'll come, but by that time you won't be thinking in terms of money or fame.

How do you explain to yourself the casual manner in which you threw your life away?

I could only wonder again at the white race's naïveté in always sending forth our worst members as our emissaries.

Using a first-person narrator is simply a matter of hearing the voice inside yourself.