You Don't Have To Be The Specialist

When You Edit, You Imagine Your Enemy Is Seated On The Other Side Of The Table. Your Enemy! And Your Enemy Is Going To Read That With A Viciousness, Because He Knows Where You Didn't Work On It. He's Going To Shake It And Really Aim For That Jugular. So You Are Going To Polish, And Revise, And Rewrite, And Cut Out, And Shape It, So That Your Enemy Has No Place To Grip It. That's How You Revise.

If You Know Two Cultures And Two Languages, That Intermediate Place, Where The Two Don't Perfectly Meet, Is Really Interesting.

I Don't Like To Go Into Subways, Because I Always See Them [ Mice]. They Are Like My Naguales [kindred Animal Spirits]. They Follow Me. I Have Literally Stepped Off Of A Plane In Phoenix And Gotten My Bag And Stepped Out On The Curb And They'll Be A Big Desert Rat Walking Right In Front Of Me.

I Never Paid Attention When People Said, "that's Gotta Be Poetry. That's Gotta Be Fiction," Except When I Was In A Graduate Program, And You Had To Claim Your Genre.

I Have This Great Fear Of Mexico City. I Won't Go To Mexico City Unless Someone Meets Me At The Airport And Is With Me. I Just Feel Very Vulnerable There.