Walk on air against your better judgement.

Harvard created wonderful conditions for me as a writerbut the writing was done, almost entirely, when I got home.

As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note.

I rhyme… to see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

But even so, none of the news of these world-spasms entered me as terror.

The whole relationship between a writer's spiritual/emotional condition and the kind of wordstuff and form-making that's going on in his work is an interesting one. When I was an undergraduate, there was a glib notion around that there was no reason to suppose a bad man could be a good writer.

I don't miss teaching. I'm learning to take my time for myself.