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.

I believe that every artist, in one way or another, is a wounded person. It's not natural to make art.

Money's important. Everyone cares about money. And when you don't have money, money becomes the overriding obsession of your life.

It would be a terrible world if everyone was an artist. Nothing would get done!

It's always a mystery to me, I have to confess. I've never been able to witness the birth of an idea. It seems as if one second, there's nothing particularly going on, and the next second, something is there.

When the publisher here in America wanted to put the word "memoir" on the title page [of 'Winter Journal'] and on the cover, I said, "No, no, no, no, no, no." No genre whatsoever. It's an independent work not really connected to those things at all.

I've learned not to look at reviews. Early on, I did. I was always curious.