Waves, Once They Land On

I Loved The Comradeship Of The Sixties And The Seventies, And I Still Maintain Friendships With The People I Worked With Then - The Ones That Are Still Alive. That's One Of The Great Gifts Of Our Political Movements, Great Friendships . . . And Also A Few Enmities.

No Metaphor Reinvents The Job Of The Nurture Of Children Except To Muddy Or Mock.

When I Was About Twenty-one, I Published A Few Poems. Maybe I Wrote A Couple Of Stories Before, But I Really Began To Write Stories In My Mid-thirties. My Kids Were Still Little, And They Were In School And Day Care, And I Had Begun To Think A Lot About Wanting To Tell Some Stories And Not Being Able To Do It In Poetry.

I Didn't Intend To Become A Short-story Writer. I Became One Because I Finished A Couple Of Short Stories And Realized That's What I Wanted To Do And Could Do With Children And With All The Other Things In My Life.

My Family Were Russian Jews. They Got You To Read As Soon As You Could. And Then Assumed You Would Read A Lot. People Didn't Really Tell Stories But They Were Good Talkers. That's Important For A Writer, To Hear Speakers.