The white cracker who wrote the National Anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word "free" to a note so high nobody could reach it. That was deliberate.

We all romp about, grieving, wondering, but with rare exception we mostly remain suspended in the Rhetorical Colloidal Forever that agglutinates between Might and Do.

I don't know anything about making movies. I'd never been on a film set. I'm really kind of an idiot when it comes to figuring out where objects are in space. If they're both moving, I can't do the math. If you ever see me driving down a road, go somewhere else quickly.

Part of what makes for good writing is an ear for what we would call the poetical. Poetry itself is another thing and it seems to me to be the most difficult writing - that those people are the best writers and they lead the way for everyone else and their writing is frighteningly great.

When I was younger, I used to be very impatient with anyone who wasn't doing overtly political work. I've since come to feel that some writers have an appetite or a need for the political, for political discourse, for historical political subjects.

I tend to be sort of quiet and shy and awkward in social situations.

In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead.