The Dutch and the English, former competitors for world dominance, taught me the wisdom of waiting as well as withholding.

Writers don't want to appear to be stupid. I don't know - maybe people become writers so that they can prove that they're not. Of course getting a book published doesn't mean that they're not stupid. At a certain point you have to stop trying to prove something and write because you need to think about something and want to communicate, in a very broad sense.

Writing and rewriting are the same thing to me. I don't believe what Allen Ginsberg said that "first thought, then - " I just don't believe that.

You have to create the space for the possibility of people speaking as they do. If writing is supposed to lead us in any way or educate or suggest other ways of being, it can't do so by simply reflecting what's considered to be realistic. I'm not a realist in that way.

I'm not just interested in the thoughts I have, but also in others' thoughts, and why not carry those forward? That's why American fiction can be so thin. All these fears, like not seeming to be original - I mean, hell, most stuff isn't. The question is whether you can articulate your thoughts for the moment in which you're living, which is a different time. Say them in a newer way. There are new events, and language changes - sensibilities change. We are writing in and of the time we're in. Oh, it's a weird time.

Nothing is a matter of age. It's really in the person because you can publish book after book after book and still want that golden apple. And maybe it's the reality principle that has hit me. I believe that a career is very different from writing. My career is a certain kind of career.

I'm bothered, as a reader, when I feel the writer is filling in too much. Again, whether it's nonfiction or fiction, I think writers are providing a kind of template or platform for thinking and imagining.