Paul Goodman

"I read Goodman and Kropotkin and Emma and the rest, and finally found a politics I liked. But then I had to integrate these political ideas, which I'd formulated over a good year's reading, into a novel, a utopia. The whole process took quite a while, as you might imagine, and there were hundreds of little details that never found their way into the novel."

"("I wonder what you think the writer's role is in terms of addressing politics in the world.") I never really think of that though I'm often asked that question. I always think that the writer's role is to get off her or his ass and to get on the street and do something. But that answer does not satisfy people. But to me that's a very important thing. I think of someone like Paul Goodman who really felt that the thing was action. So then he could write all the love poems he wanted for the rest of his life."

"Sometimes you come to literature that seems related to your own in some ways, but after you've been writing for a while. And then you feel terribly corroborated. Like Paul's [Goodman] stories, the ones I really love the most, I read them much later, but they made me feel very good about certain things I was doing."