This was before voice mail, recorded phone messages you can't escape. Life was easier then. You just didn't pick up the phone.

Keeing busy" is the remedy for all the ills in America. It's also the means by which the creative impulse is destroyed.

There is the expectation that a younger generation has the opportunity to redeem the crimes and failings of their elders and would have the strength and idealism to do so.

There is nothing "ordinary" about reality.

I have beliefs, of course, like everyone-but I don't always believe in them.

And so you must grant to God what is God and not try to think of what you have lost, for that way is madness.

Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books. It may be the case that we all must write many books in order to achieve a few lasting ones - just as a young writer or poet might have to write hundreds of poems before writing his first significant one.