I wanted to be a poet when I was 20; I had no interest in fiction or biography and precious little interest in history, but those three elements in my life have become the most important.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
At college, I wanted to be a poet. I liked the extremely concentrated language, the atmosphere of otherworldliness.
At the age of 15, a teacher had asked me what I wanted to do for a career, and without knowing why or even how I replied that I wanted to be a poet.
Poetry was the first step, and from the age of 18, there was nothing else I wanted to do.
I always wanted to be an artist, writer and poet since I was seven, and one has to live long enough to evolve as an artist and do one's finest work.
I was completely devoted to reading and books from the age of seven. It took until I was 18 to have the confidence to write poetry.
I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.
What's important about me is that I really have, in ways I never could have foreseen when I was young, a writing career that's reached a lot of different places.
I wanted to be an artist. I was studying art. I wanted to be a great painter. When I went into the Navy, there wasn't much to draw at sea. So I began writing, and I began reading a lot.
When I was young, all I wanted was to write books and be an artist.
I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.