A writer can't subtract or excise any of his/her past because doing so would erase the work produced during that time.

Every scar in my face is worth it.

"Politics" per se is absent from my writing but there is usually a moral (if ironic) compass.

By the way of connecting with subject, with theme, I was able to find a kind of lifeline. Writing's like a lifeline. You have to get the right way in. Otherwise the material just lies there, and you can't do anything with it.

For what are the words with which to summarize a lifetime, so much crowded confused happiness terminated by such stark slow-motion pain?

Writing allows for fictitious voices - the voices of persons unlike myself - that might otherwise be muted.

Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.