Poetry's always dead, you know? You don't realize how good poetry is until 15 years later.

I believe in people treating each other with respect.

we still have the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building and the Woolworth Building, but it just seems like part of the nature of New York, that it's always shifting.

I'm usually alone or asleep, at home.

You're always thinking, "What does that add up to?" You can't really get a handle on it. I was curious. I felt like it would be an interesting challenge for me to write down what I'd seen and done and learned - all the convolutions captured in one item that I could look at and get some grip on what the hell happened.

I've come to think of myself as a writer of books.

A memoir takes some particular threads, some incidents, some experience from a person's life and gives an account of it.