People think they're gonna make a living off poetry. Ten years ago, maybe a couple of people did. Right now, no one, I don't think.

The things I wanted to be when I was a kid were an archeologist, because of dinosaur bones; a garbage man, because they got to ride on the side of the trucks; and a writer.

My father, God bless him, thought it was such an impossible desire to be able to make a living the way I do. I was destined to go into the bar business like him or go to college and be a lawyer. I was not encouraged, and in a way maybe that made me more hardheadedly committed to being a writer.

The main event is freedom. I often wonder if I had the complete freedom to not have to write, if I would write. That's the one mystery that I hope I get to experience. It might be a good idea to retire, since as this delusion of an economy progresses, it seems that if you make ten grand a year or a hundred grand a year, there's absolutely no difference.

Steiner has here transformed the vaporous conceptions of his life, the vapors of what never was and never will be, from their aeriform state to a fine and ethereal substantiality. My Unwritten Books is a gathering of shades, an elegant and eloquent gathering of mind, feeling, and autumnal passion. (...) And that is the lovely irony of this unique little book. None of these unwritten books should have been written. They are better here, as they are, untamed and errant phantoms of a brilliance whose emanations no one mortal lifetime could ever accommodate in full.

I've gone more than 40 years without having to use an alarm clock or go to an office. At this point, I don't think I'd be capable of not writing. I don't think I could deprive myself of that sky. It would be like putting an animal in a cage.

The thing is, the more you fear death, the more you die. So it really doesn't pay off. It's a fear of the dark. Like any experience in life, you wonder, Well, if this ever happens, how would I react? and then it happens, and only then do you know.