Whenever I get lost in a novel I just throw a poem in. What it does is flare up, and it's so illuminated that I'm able to see where to go. I write between these illuminations.

Whenever I get lost in a novel I just throw a poem in. What it does is flare up, and it's so illuminated that I'm able to see where to go. I write between these illuminations.

Writing is like hunting. There are brutally cold afternoons with nothing in sight, only the wind and your breaking heart. Then the moment when you bag something big. The entire process is beyond intoxicating.

Just being in a room with myself is almost more stimulation than I can bear.

I believed in immaculate conception and spontaneous combustion. I believed in aliens from outer space and vampires, prophecy, and the resurrection of the dead. I had deja vu many times each day. I was thirteen.

The Peruvian flute music is . . . cool. In this music, they have not yet invented the industrial revolution that leads to excessive punctuality or the failed experiment they call the nuclear family. This is the music of elements, untarnished, unrehearsed.

writing is about doing something very close to the bone. It's about shocking yourself. When I write, I like to make myself cry, laugh - I like to give myself an experience. I see a lot of writing out there that's very safe. But if you're not scaring yourself, why would you think that you'd be scaring anybody else? If you're not coming to a revelation about your place in the universe, why would you think anyone else would?