I was trying not to be happy, hopeful. I did not believe I deserved happiness or even hope, if you knew my soul.

I write in longhand and assemble lots of notes, and then I try to collate them into a coherent chronology. It's like groping along in the dark. I like writing and find it challenging, but I don't find it easy.

Early publication can be a dubious blessing: we all know writers who would give anything not to have published their first book, and go about trying to buy up all existing copies.

It's hard to say how we compare to other people. We each inhabit our own personalities. I have often felt that I'm a very neutral being and that I have almost no personality. I'm drawn to writing partly because I'm fascinated by the mimetic process.

I've never given up. I've always kept going. I don't feel that I could afford to give up. That would be the beginning of the end.

Boxing has become America's tragic theater.

[Emily] Dickinson, our supreme poet of inwardness.