Because most writers have totally unrealistic concepts of how publishing works.

I got $30 from Nation magazine for a poem and $500 for my first book of poems.

Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness and they live by what they hear. Such people become crazy, or they become legends.

Your kids inevitably want to move where they had their vacations when they were younger.

Birthdays are ghost bounty hunters that track you down to ask, "Que pasa, baby?

Life is sentimental. Why should I be cold and hard about it? That's the main content. The biggest thing in people's lives is their loves and dreams and visions, you know.

I was on the verge of jumping into one of those holes in life out of which we emerge a bit tattered and bloody, though we remain sure nonetheless that we had to make the jump.