'A Fair Maiden' existed in notes and sketches for perhaps a year. When I traveled, I would take along with me my folder of notes - 'ideas for stories.' Eventually, I began to write it and wrote it fairly swiftly - in perhaps two months of fairly intense writing and rewriting. Most of my time writing is really re-writing.

Much of my writing is energized by unresolved memories - something like ghosts in the psychological sense.

Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.

Like a flame is real enough, isn't it, while it's burning?-even if there's a time it goes out?

I don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of reading. I'm also a judge for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which gives awards to literature and nonfiction.

On the elusive gift of blending austerity of craft with elasticity of allure.

Each genre exerts a considerable spell, as a kind of "form" to be filled, as a Shakespearean sonnet is filled.