Well, I think writing is basically about time and rhythm. Like with jazz. You have your basic melody and then you just riff off of it. And the riffs are about timing.

Yeah, I mean, I put work out there for people to use and I'm grateful when you use it.

I found my voice was a reaction to all that voice stuff.

I'm really fascinated and you know I've been wondering about that usage of language, various breathing techniques and why in these practices language is being used in another way.

One of the reasons I think the ultra right-wing has such power in this country is that no one talks out.

We've been very bad at understanding why the right-wing does things.

There's a backlash against womyn that's really bad right now.

Traveling around I don't think people are that horrible, I think they just don't know.

Some of the stuff about Yogi energy is really fascinating.

Well, I think writing is basically about time and rhythm. Like with jazz. You have your basic melody and then you just riff off of it. And the riffs are about timing.

I think the best thing in cases of censorship or things like this is to get as much media as possible.

I mean, once work's out there it's meant to be used.

I'm very staid compared to my students, actually.

I might be writing what people expect me to write, writing from that place where I might be ruled by economic considerations. To overcome that, I started working with my dreams, because I'm not so censored when I use dream material.

I understand that postmodern literature probably means people like DeLillo, The Fiction Collective, but I don't get it that those writers are really influenced by postmodern theorists.

We get on the bandwagon in all sorts of ways - you know minor ways and major ways - like what you've just encountered which isn't censorship exactly, it was something sort of uglier in a way.

And I'm working at trying to find a kind of language where I won't be so easily modulated by expectation.

I write it to get it out of me. I don't write it to remember it.

I question: do we really understand the differences between modernist and postmodernist?

First of all, writing at best - certainly fiction writing - more and more I think is magic.

And internalization is used in this country as a very effective political tool.

I understand that when people read my books that there's something there - but I don't identify with it.

But I still don't have a clear idea of what my voice is.

I mean, they censor your work when they're scared of it.

Well, fear and homophobia are both pervasive.

That's what the right-wing is good at: figuring out the left wing.

The literary culture, if you examine it, the high literary culture is that which preserves the government and you know it's really the talk for those who have.

But guys such as Allen and William are more supportive than most men.

I think what we have in this country is a little more dangerous in a way because it can't be seen fully. It's sorta internal censorship. We censor each other.

On the surface we all act like we all love each other and we're free and easy, and actually we're far more moralistic than any other society I've ever lived in.

I think it's really important to find out why people hurt you or try to oppose you or whatever.

I wasn't really into body piercings until I found that about half my female students had them.

You can do whatever you want with my work.

You know I've had work banned.

Dreams are manifestations of identities.

Whereas the slums in Hamburg are the slums of its sailors Berlin is a big slum.

I find waiting unbearable because it makes me passive and negates me. I hate being nothing.

The blues is the foundation, and it's got to carry the top. The other part of the scene, the rock 'n' roll and the jazz, are the walls of the blues.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

In my view a jazz musician is a great musician.

Words are the children of reason and, therefore, can't explain it. They really can't translate feeling because they're not part of it. That's why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling.

So our ears got used to listening to jazz in the place that it was that the bass player could not play. No one really realized it and really addressed it until the bass players who could play their instrument came along and started doing something with it.

It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.

Humans are imperfect. That's one of the reasons that classical and jazz are in trouble. We're on the quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life.

I hate Stanley Clark, but I have to admit he's playing Jazz whether I like it or not.

I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here.

If one takes all the styles in jazz harmonically from the earliest beginnings to the latest experiments, he still has a rather limited scope when compared to the rest of music in the world.

I don't know who's 18 years old today that, 20 years hence, is going to be a jazz fan.

I don't like freedom jazz - I think it's void of roots and void of foundation.