I can maintain my sense of the sacredness of existence only by understanding my own limitations and losing my self-importance.
After a lifetime of world travel I’ve been fascinated that those in the third world don’t have the same perception of reality that we do.
Yeah, but now suddenly – you know, universities are notoriously market oriented, too.
I used to get criticized for putting food in novels.
I should add that I very much enjoy certain cities especially Paris, New York and Chicago.
I got $30 from Nation magazine for a poem and $500 for my first book of poems.
I seek the substantial in life.
I’m actually forced to write about Michigan because as a native of that state it’s the place I know best.
Everybody has a gun in their car in Detroit.
When we were children we were errant enough to wish to be birds for the day but there’s nothing easier to lose than playfulness.
That is simply the most beautiful publishing office in the world, with that cranky old building in that wonderful park.
Fate has never ladled out hardship very evenly, and this frequently trips our often infantile sense of justice.
Nothing on my trip thus far was as I expected which shows you that rather than simply read about the United States you have to log the journey.
I’d rather get a brain tumor than go back to teaching.
When we die we are only stories in the minds of others, I thought.
I do have trouble with titles.
I don’t know what psychotherapy does. I have been seeing the same person for 26 years now.
There is a neurologist, a woman over at Harvard who wanted me to come talk to them, and in France I have a lot of readers in the sciences. I can’t tell you why.
Because most writers have totally unrealistic concepts of how publishing works.
Naturally we would prefer seven epiphanies a day and an earth not so apparently devoid of angels.
I write novellas because I don’t like loose sprawling prose.