Kafka wrote the great line: "my education has damaged me in ways I do not even know." And that's always been a signature motto for me.

In a practical sense, pain kept me from sitting down as much, so that sometimes I would have to stand to write. Not that I would necessarily have gotten anywhere anyway. But it definitely set me back to be in so much pain.

People, no matter the economic class, find ways to feed their narcissism.

I think it's very hard to reconcile oneself to the notion that it may not matter what you think if you still want to write.

There's not usually one reason why we do anything and, in fact, often we don't know why we've done what we've done, especially what we have said or why, for instance, in conversation, which can be very tricky. Finally, we say something and think, "Why did we say that?" In retrospect we might know.

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.

I think it's true that unless human beings experience something, they simply don't understand what people are going through.