Heartbreak makes us stronger; it's an opportunity for spiritual growth. How can you understand someone else's pain if you have not yourself suffered?

It's so good for your health to take those naps. I don't know why people brag that they sleep five hours. I'd be ashamed. I'm proud that I sleep nine hours.

"You're next, after the feather dancers." And you had to get their attention, because otherwise people would go, "Oh, a poet." You really have to learn.

I was reading Emily Dickinson and Edwin Arlington Robinson, but these weren't the poets that influenced me. I think Gwendolyn Brooks influenced me because she wrote about Chicago, and she wrote about poor people. And she influenced me in my life by giving me a blurb. I would see her in action, and she listened to every single person. She didn't say, "Oh, I'm tired. I gotta go." She was there, and present, with every single person. She's one of the great teachers.

That's what you need for your writing - to learn how to be present, learn how to be calm. So take that nap, do that meditation.

That's all you have to ask from yourself writing a book. That it's the best you can do and that you did it without any ego involved and that you did it for somebody else. That's the best you can do.

The only reason we write - well, the only reason why I write; maybe I shouldn't generalize - is so that I can find out something about myself. Writers have this narcissistic obsession about how we got to be who we are. I have to understand my ancestors - my father, his mother and her mother - to understand who I am. It all leads back to the narcissistic pleasure of discovering yourself.