I'm actually a lowlife. On the street at fifteen and also in jail for the first time at that age, and off and on the street until my mid-twenties.

One of the principle things life has taught me is that we always have a choice. When we say we "can't," we usually mean we're just not willing to pay the price.

Prison experience puts distance between me and any person who hasn't been there, done that.

My friends in prison were mostly women more like myself: not historical figures who I did not relate to as peers, but hookers and addicts.

The only thing I remember writing in prison is a couple of poems for an inmate magazine they did once a year.

My published works are concrete evidence that I exist.

At eighty-one, health club-lusting is as close as I'll ever come to getting laid again.