I'm sorry, I'm absolutely convinced that there is at the moment no realistic prospect for very much hope in human affairs.

The journalistic vision sharpens to the point of maximum impact every event, every individual and social configuration; but the honing is uniform.

Given my age, I am pretty near the end, probably, of my career as a writer, a scholar, a teacher. And I wanted to speak of things I will not be able to do.

Central to everything I am and believe and have written is my astonishment, naive as it seems to people, that you can use human speech both to bless, to love, to build, to forgive and also to torture, to hate, to destroy and to annihilate.

I don't really think of myself so much as a writer as a stylist, someone who came into writing from the back door and has found it through a certain very specific and personal means.

I'm pretty much living my dream job, but one day I would love to dedicate more time to writing and performing my own music.

By the time I was a teenager, I knew I wanted to be an artist. I was a born draftsman and liked all forms of art, so I just knew that's what I wanted to do.

I'm not really quiet or shy. Ask any of my friends! But I always ground my poetry in life itself. Poetry is an art of language, though, so I am always aware of every word's meaning, or multiple meanings.