I'm going to die one day. I know it's coming for me, too. I'll be a mountain, I'll be a stone on the beach. I'll be nourishment.

At the time I was growing up, literature was involved with the so-called confessional poets. And I was not interested in that. I did not think that specific and personal perspective functioned well for the reader at all.

Believe me, if anybody has a job and starts at 9, there's no reason why they can't get up at 4:30 or five and write for a couple of hours, and give their employers their second-best effort of the day - which is what I did.

I was very careful never to take an interesting job. If you have an interesting job, you get interested in it.

That's the joy of art - it should be dangerous and challenging but it's just art - it's safe.

Happiness is a hard master, particularly other people's happiness.

It was physically difficult, adjusting to wheelchair life, but I remember a great relief and happiness that I was finally getting somewhere, finding musicians to work with that were sympathetic.

I just try to write what I think would really happen, and with grief and tragedy, there are these naturally occurring moments of levity and humor and absurdity. I think that's what life is really like. Sadness gets interrupted, and happiness gets interrupted.