I've always wanted to figure out how to do a walking story. I'd never figured out how to do one and have it work or be interesting or have anything that it's about.

Teaching writing puts you on the point of a pin in terms of what you want your own writing to be.

You can sometimes find something good on the other side of doing something very, very painful.

That was one of the problems with the Narcissus figure. Here is a face looking at a face, and the problem is the image of the thing is never actually the thing. You try and grab it and it's not there. It's water. It disappears.

There's a quote that I learned in college a million years ago. "Happy, thought I, is the man who can, in one and the same embrace, hold both his love and the object of his love." Holding the feeling that you have and all the images that you've got and all the fantasies and romantic associations while also holding the actual core person that's been saddled with all of this.

When you get immersed in whatever you're writing, the world does suddenly get so filtered through what you're writing. And then of course what you're writing then filters the world right back.

Sometimes there isn't a way to hug and make everything better.