The essays in The Great Taos Bank Robbery were my project to win a Master of Arts degree in English when I quit being a newspaper editor and went back to college.

I quit college and neglected to tell my dad.

I quit college. I was studying architecture for about a year.

We said 'You're going to have to quit this. It's gonna get you. You just don't win with heroin. You die or you go to jail. There's no middle ground. There's no other options,'

Winners never quit and quitters never win.

It's like all the signs were telling me that I shouldn't be a boxer, so I quit.