I made a very conscious effort to finish 'The Cypress House' before 'So Cold the River' launched because I thought that would help build a buffer between my writing and any impact that came from either the success or the failure of that first book.

Jobs for every American is doomed to failure because of modern automation and production. We ought to recognize it and create an income-maintenance system so every single American has the dignity and the wherewithal for shelter basic food and medical care. I'm talking about welfare for all. Without it you're going to have warfare for all.

You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes make all you can. Because remember that's where you'll find success - on the far side of failure.

My big philosophy is: Try and work with good people because the process is your life. That's going to be really really hard. I'm glad I learned the lesson 'Failure is OK.'

I think there's something quite interesting about the almost tragic quality of a lot of overwrought prose because it has a much more self-conscious awareness of its own failure to touch the real.

My failure during the first five or six years of my art training to get set in the right direction and the disappointment which it caused me drove me the more persistently into writing as an alternative.

The pressures are intense because the rewards for success and the penalty for failure are more and more.

So the poet who wants to be something that he cannot be and is a failure in plain life makes up fictitious versions of his predicament that are interesting even to other persons because nobody is a perfect automobile salesman.

You can't be afraid of failure and you can't be afraid of success because either one gets in the way of your work.

Washington D.C. is what is broken not the immigration policies. We have good laws. We have people suffer every day because of government's failure to enforce the law and be respectful to the process we have. We have a pathway to citizenship already in place.