Death Is Just The Last Scene Of

Boxing Is About Being Hit Rather More Than It Is About Hitting, Just As It Is About Feeling Pain, If Not Devastating Psychological Paralysis, More Than It Is About Winning.

'we Were The Mulvaneys' Is Perhaps The Novel Closest To My Heart. I Think Of It As A Valentine To A Passing Way Of American Life, And To My Own Particular Child - And Girlhood In Upstate New York. Everyone In The Novel Is Enormously Close To Me, Including Marianne's Cat, Muffin, Who Was In Fact My Own Cat.

Just As Our Historical Beginnings Are Utterly Mysterious-why Are We Born? Why When And As We Are?-so Too Are The Beginnings Of Works Of Art And Of "artists.

Fame's Carapace Does Not Allow For Easy Breathing.

I Don't Think That Any 'ism' Is Higher Than Literature Or Art. So I'm A Formalist. I Greatly Honor And Respect The Form Of A Work.