I was reading for understanding. I wanted to do to a reader what Salinger did for me.

I lost my job and started painting houses with a friend. The marriage had ended about the same time the career did.

Place is character. And all writing is regional.

I had begun what I thought might be a career in social work. I was married and deeply involved in the anti-war movement. I thought I'd go about saving the world one person at a time. I worked with kids, teenagers mostly, in neighborhood centers, on the streets, and eventually in a drop-in center.

The landscape of childhood shapes us as it shapes the characters in our stories. You never forget the sacred places of your childhood.

Love is anticipation and memory, uncertainty and longing. It’s unreasonable, of course. Nothing begins with so much excitement and hope and pleasure as love, except maybe writing a story. And nothing fails as often, except writing stories. And like a story, love must be troubled to be interesting.

Actually, my first literary heroes were the Romantic poets, so I began to get serious by writing poems. I have notebooks full of them that I cherish but am afraid to look at.