Writing is like the relationship with your bowels. First you can, then you can't. Finally, you must. Only then should you reach for the paper.

History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldn't live without.

Short stories amount for the most part to parlour tricks, party favours with built-in snappers, gadgets for including recognition and reversals

We think about sex obsessively except during the act, when our minds tend to wander.

When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.

Occasionally a student writer comes up with something really beautiful and moving, and you won't know for years if it was an accident or the first burst of something wonderful.

I never abandoned either forms or freedom. I imagine that most of what could be called free verse is in my first book. I got through that fairly early.