You got one choice at the beginning but if you didn't choose right, things got narrow real quick.

Don't love anything that can be taken away.

I wouldn't mind being a track and field coach.

We had some good times at school. I didn't know how good those times were until I left, but I guess that's the way of it

I think writing a poem is like being a greyhound. Writing a novel is like being a mule. You go up one long row, then down another, and try not to look up too often to see how far you still have to go.

Cool-Hand Luke' is one of my favorite movies.

I think that's what I love about writing, is the ability to try to, in a sense, take a vacation from yourself and try to enter the sensibility of another time, another character, another place.