17 years old. As a child, I lived in an old railroad house in the west of New Jersey, north of Princeton. The trains shook my windows every night, when the 2 AM freight ran its course in my backyard. I moved out of there at age 9, and woke up every night at 2 AM for the following three years, to watch the glass panes shudder in the wake of the train. This is when I began writing--all alone in the middle of night, with only companions in Hemmingway and Eliot, Byron and Poe.