“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

“I write to find out what I'm talking about.”

“All I knew was what I wasn’t, and it took me some years to discover what I was.Which was a writer.By which I mean not a "good" writer or a "bad" writer but simply a writer, a person whose most absorbed and passionate hourse are spent arranging words on pieces of paper. Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. Why did the oil refineries around Carquinez Straits seem sinister to me in the summer of 1956? Why have the night lights in the bevatron burned in my mind for twenty years? What is going on in these pictures in my mind?”

“I write to find out what I think.”

“I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to be who I really am. And I'm going to figure out what that is.”

“I think what I need to do is stay awake while I'm sleeping so I can see what I'm dreaming better!!”