When the dream came into being, I always pursued it.

The first poem I ever wrote, about loss, when I was 5 years old, expressed the themes of everything I would ever write.

If you know anything about James Whitcomb Riley, you know that Little Orphan Annie is one of the most fantastic characters who ever lived in America before Charlie Chaplin.

There were also some cruel reviews by women, but the tone of the male reviewers, sometimes hysterical, was different. I have suffered, but I don't want to name names but there have been men who have seemed to want to destroy me or my writing, men I don't even know.

I think there is a rage against women. I've come to see that now although at the time I did not notice it. I was preoccupied with my teaching and my writing.

I never thought of myself as either a woman or a man. I thought of myself as a person who was born to a writer, who was doomed to be a writer.

I think most people dont like others who, without a voice of their own, emulate the other. I certainly dont want anybody just to pick up my thoughts and hand them back to me.