Childhood was terrifying for me. A kid has no control. You’re three feet tall, flat broke, unemployed, and illiterate. Terror snaps you awake. You pay keen attention. People can just pick you up and move you and put you down.

It strikes me that whatever advantages there are to being a boy--getting to stay out late and having other people wash your clothes and bring you plates of stuff--get undercut by having to play football.

I'm doomed to act like myself, even when it's inconvenient!

I think we fall in love and become adults and become citizens in a way by writing stories about ourselves.

I do have a really good memory. I mean, like, I can remember all the phone numbers of everybody on the street I grew up on.

I always say that a poet loves the world, and the prose writer needs to create an alternative world.

Im always terrified when Im writing.