Writing is such a strange, utterly mysterious process. First, there was nothing; then, suddenly, there was something. I don't know where thoughts are born. Where the hell does it come from? I don't know. I really don't know.

I knew from the age of 16 that I wanted to be a writer because I just didn't think I could do anything else. So I read and read and wrote short stories and dreamed of escape.

He would conclude that nothing was real except chance.

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

I never would have thought of that word, "hospitality." I settle into the rhythm of my steps.

Memory is the space in which a thing happens for a second time.

All I wanted to do was write - at the time, poems, and prose, too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going in some modest way, and I didn't need much, I was unmarried at the time, no children.