Reading a good poem can give me a far bigger kick than a novel. But it's not something I can keep doing. It would be like shooting up 10 times a day.

I never read Ford Madox Ford's "The Good Soldier." I've been reading books that I should have read years ago and did not. That's one of them.

I remember coming upon Philip Larkin in my 20s in the early '60s and when Sylvia Plath's "Ariel" came out it knocked me off my feet.

Writing is a job, a craft, and you learn it by trying to write every day and by facing the page with humility and gall. And you have to love to read books, all kinds of books, good books. You are not looking for anything in particular; you are just letting stuff seep in.

They are asleep. This is the condition they prefer. They are afraid of the world and sleep is a way of dealing with their fear. Someday they will wake. Perhaps something frightful will happen. Indeed, there is no better invitation to the frightful than ignorance - that is, sleep. (29)

Let's say someone has experienced a violent trauma or betrayal: a child has been raped by a parent or has witnessed the destruction of someone he loves or has been so traumatized by the possibility of beatings and punishments that he's afraid to act. If the trauma is great enough, that person's life may become frozen, emotionally frozen even though he still gets up in the morning, is busy all day, and goes to bed at night. But there's this empty space that begins to fill with rage, rage toward everyone - the perpetrator, the people in the world who haven't suffered, even toward himself. (174)

Each thing I do, I rush through, so I can do something else.