When I was home, traditionally since I was young, I'd write in cafés. That was the romantic notion in 1963. Café atmospheres back then were different. The café life really stemmed from the Parisians' idea of it, with poets struggling over their poems and drinking coffee. No music, no sounds, maybe a little jazz, or soul, but mostly nothing. Now you go into a café and the music is really loud, people are having business meetings, they are on their cellphones. It changes from generation to generation.

Sometimes you write passages that don't need to be rewritten. Performance is that for me. Improvisation, things that happen in the moment, are sometimes wonderful, or wonderful as a moment to be shared between performer and people, but that's it. There might be a strong bond between you and the people, a transformative night, but as a live record it might not translate.

I was a lower middle-class kid. My family had no money. There was no room in our small house where there were already four kids, including myself, living.

Arthur Conan Doyle had to be Sherlock Holmes in order to envision how Sherlock Holmes would unravel a mystery. He had to be in Sherlock's situations. As a writer, you have to be of two minds.

What a model of an artist was for me was an artist who worked. Picasso was the ultimate model, because the work ethic he had.

Well, I'm not one of those people who needs the limelight. If I'm performing, that's what I'm doing. If I'm not, I don't long for it. I don't need the approval of an audience, or applause.

One of my great goals when I first started taking photographs or showing them publicly is that people might want one for over their desk. That's my goal.