I'm generous. I give good tips. It's just - the way I live my life, ironically enough, is: I don't want anything. I'm not a consumer. I don't crave objects.

Books demand more. You have to be a more active participant.

Most people just want to be part of the world, they want to live, love, and enjoy themselves - to take part in the world around them. Whereas artists are always retreating, locking the door, and inventing other worlds.

To feel estranged from language is to lose your own body.

We all want to believe in impossible things, I suppose, to persuade ourselves that miracles can happen.

[Charles] Reznikoff was in between faiths, in between worlds... a double, hyphenated American. I think it probably goes deeper than that.

All children are love children, he said, but only the best ones are ever called that.