I Get So Lonely Sometimes, I Could

I'd Spent Way More Years Worrying About How To Look Like A Poet -- Buying Black Clothes, Smearing On Scarlet Lipstick, Languidly Draping Myself Over Thrift-store Furniture -- Than I Had Learning How To Assemble Words In Some Discernible Order.

Most Great Writers Suffer And Have No Idea How Good They Are. Most Bad Writers Are Very Confident. Be Willing To Be A Child And Be The Lilliputian In The World Of Gulliver, The Bat Girl In Yankee Stadium. That’s A More Fruitful Way To Be.

Those Are Only Rumors Of Suffering. Real Suffering Has A Face And A Smell. It Lasts In The Most Intense Form No Matter What You Drape Over It. And It Knows Your Name.

I Don't Have A Copy Of My Books, And The Degree To Which I Never Read Them Is Profound. I Never Look.

The Truth Is When I Went To Graduate School I Would've Said I Was Among The Least Talented Of The Students, I Was Certainly The Least Smart, Or Less Educated. But I Worked Very Hard.