it's a rare day when she speaks in anything but platitudes--all those exhausted phrases and hand-me-down ideas that cram the dump sites of contemporary wisdom

I thought, "Well, I'm writing about early childhood, so maybe it would make sense to write about late childhood as well, early adulthood." Those were my thoughts, and this was how this crazy book [Winter Journal] was composed. I've never seen a book with pictures like at the end, pictures related to things you've read before.

Fiction creating reality.

In other words: It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not. Or, more bluntly: Wherever I am not is the place where I am myself. Or else, taking the bull by the horns: Anywhere out of the world.

Even in New York, there are a lot of very attractive girls pedaling around. That just happens to be one of the nice sights in our city, seeing a young woman on a bike.

As my friend George Oppen once said to me about getting old: what a strange thing to happen to a little boy.

I have difficulty orienting myself in space, and I'm probably one of the few people who gets lost in Manhattan.