I wanted very much to be Miles Davis when I was a boy, but without the practice. It just looked like an endless road.
A writer's job is to destroy and then to build the thing back up again by a chosen means.
I lost my second marriage because of drinking, and I loved the woman very much. But I thought I needed booze to write. I'm glad I was disabused.
I wouldn't be happy had I only been a teacher, if all I had done was help young people, frankly. I don't get nearly the joy teaching as I do out of creation.
I hate editing. I love to write, but I hate to reread my stuff. To revise.
I was always kind of florid. And full of rhetoric. That was my flaw. My whole time writing, I've had to work against that because it can be a wrecking posture.
My dad read history, about a book a day, but only after he retired as a successful bank and insurance man.