I had been plunged into a different world. I found myself spending half my time answering weird questions on book tours in the Midwest. People would stand up and explain to me the situation in their office and ask me whether they should resign or not.

If you look at my last songs and first short stories, there is a real connection between them.

The fantasy never got beyond that—I didn’t let it—and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn’t sobbing or out of control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be.

And if these incidents now seem full of significance and all of a piece, it's probably because I'm looking at them in the light of what came later.

And so we stood together like that, at the top of that field for what seemed like ages, not saying anything, just holding each other, while the wind kept blowing and blowing at us, tugging our clothes, and for a moment, it seemed like we were holding onto each other because that was the only way to stop us from being swept away into the night.

I have the feeling of this completely alternative person I should have become. There was another life that I might have had, but I’m having this one.

I think it's quite difficult to understand what kind of life a writer leads. They might be millionaires, or they might be starving people.