Q: So you bought her the guitar, huh?
A: Yeah, I bought that old Gibson that she’s got. Yeah. It was a pawn-shop guitar. Back then I don’t think I paid more than 40, 50 bucks for it. Now it’s worth several thousand.

Q: So when you got off the bus from Southern California to New York City, had you been there, before?
A: Never. No. Had never been east of the Mississippi.

Q: What was your first day in New York like?
A: I got off the Greyhound in Times Square and I don’t think I had more than 15 cents on me, so I saw this little place that said, “Five dollars for blood.” And I went in there and did a blood donation and got five bucks and went out and bought a hamburger. That was the first thing I did.

Q: The fact that you didn’t receive an extended formal education in writing—has that been an advantage to you?
A: In some ways yes, because I’ve been able to explore a lot of writing that I’m not sure I would’ve gone into if I’d been educated in it—if it had been introduced to me through a class or a teacher or a scholar, I’m not sure I’d have the same sense of attachment that I do now. Because I feel like the writers that I’m drawn to, the writers that I really cling to, are the writers who seem to be writing out of a desperate act. It’s like their writing is part of a survival kit. Those are the writers that I just absolutely cherish and carry with me everywhere I go. Because their writing means more to them than just puttin’ out a book. It’s somethin’ that has to do with their survival. Those are the guys I’m not sure I would’ve discovered, had I been in a literature class. Maybe that’s not true. But I feel like I discovered them on my own. It’s a long list, but Beckett would probably be at the top of it. And César Vallejo. Borges. There’s a ton of ‘em.

Q: How old were you when Beckett’s Waiting for Godot famously fell into your hands?
A: Let’s see, I was probably about 17, 18—something like that. I’d never seen anything quite like it. I’d literally never seen anything on the page like it.

Q: Nothing that even looked like it.
A: Yeah. Exactly. I said, “What is this?” And then I kept looking at it and kept looking at it, and read it over and over and over again, and it was definitely a spur, you know? I didn’t want to imitate it at all. It had nothing to do with imitation. But it felt as though it gave me license to go ahead and try something on my own.