Reading ... changes you. You aren't the same person after you've read a particular book as you were before, and you will read the next book, unless both are Harlequin Romances, in a slightly different way.

The cat jumps up on the bed and tries to get onto my head. It's his way of telling whether or not i'm dead. If i'm not, he wants to be scratched; if i am - he'll think of something

No male writer is likely to be asked to sit on a panel addressing itself to the special problems of a male writer.

While in a vintage restaurant..."the past isn't quaint while you're in it. Only at a safe distance, later, when you see it as decor, not as the shape your life's been squeezed into.

I used to act in college, but always comedy. Didn't do [William] Shakespeare - did Ben Jonson.

I don't think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before.