Music still sort of hangs up there in the sky for me as this thing that moves me so much, but I can't really make it. It's like a car I can't drive.

Poetry is supposed to be musical. But people don't understand prose. They're so used to reading journalism - clunky, functional sentences that convey factual information - facts, more than just the surfaces of things.

You could grow up in the city where history was made and still miss it all.

I grew up with an artist father, and my parents' friends were also mainly artists or writers, so he connects what I do with his example.

I don't paint anymore. I haven't since I abandoned it at 19, in order to begin writing seriously.

There's something about the rhythms of language that correspond to the rhythms of our own bodies.

Writing is a private discipline, in a field of companions.