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For the longest time I was afraid I'd have to keep on working at the factories. There was a steel mill and a pottery; if you didn't go to college, you went to work in those places.

Yes, I would have rather finished up in Pittsburgh.

I never wanted to look back on my career and be embarrassed about work that I chose to do.

I didn't speak English until I came to Pittsburgh.

I never pursued a career relentlessly.

You can't work in a steel mill and think small. Giant converters hundreds of feet high. Every night, the sky looked enormous. It was a torrent of flames - of fire. The place that Pittsburgh used to be had such scale.

I never felt my career was going backwards.

I am haunted by what my life would have been had I not had the courage in my early twenties to leave Pittsburgh for New York City and really commit to being a writer. Pittsburgh is both post-industrial and provincial, and the opportunities there are limited. It would have been quite easy to simply drift through life.

Fortunately, I've never had a job.