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

the music was always in the background, like music at a church service; it was something to depend upon.

I think it's very important for writers and artists generally to be witnesses to the world, and to be transparent. To let other people speak... to travel... to experience the world. And memorialize it.

Death is just the last scene of the last act.

Writers and artists never pay attention to advice given by their elders, quite rightly. The only worthwhile advice is the most general: Keep trying, don't give up, don't be discouraged, don't pay attention to detractors. Everyone knows this.

There is a terrible weight in all kinds of beauty

I rarely write in my own voice except in book reviews and memoirs; otherwise, I am writing in mediated voices, modulated in terms of the characters whom the voices express.