When I got to Grinnell College, I was part of the black turtleneck sweater and Camel cigarette crowd of poets and writers.

The body is an inviolable limit. And you have to really hurt it before you know that.

It came home to me indelibly that I was never going to change anything in America by walking around carrying a sign. It was a great revelation. It saved me a lot of anxiety and a lot of wasted energy.

Where I didn't have the maturity and the compassion to consider other people's needs, I did a lot of damage.

I think it's good that people value their bodies and take care of them. I think if you cross the line and begin using your body as an asset or as an extension of your vanity, you've gone too far.

Once you accept anything as tacked down, then you begin to build a structure, to accept limits. Then you have to make a choice as to whether or not you're going to accept that structure. If you do, you give up the notion of total freedom.

When I got to Grinnell College, I was part of the black turtleneck sweater and Camel cigarette crowd of poets and writers.