I find it only natural for a storyteller to be interested in storytelling and, for anyone who spends the better part of his or her life writing fiction, it is hardly surprising that the pleasures, worries, and mechanics of fiction-making should enter the work.

My fondness for extended monologue might have been encouraged by two decades of writing stage and radio dramas.

Eventually, I came to believe, stupidly, that I had exhausted that story's "original" form with its single use. I went on to other stories, other forms and genres.

When I was awarded a fellowship in poetry by the National Endowment for the Arts (for "Alphabets"), I felt myself suddenly (vaingloriously) equal to my Crow, which would be - I knew at once - Rat.

I'm too ambitious to give another man credit, even if that other man is only myself in disguise.

I find it only natural for a storyteller to be interested in storytelling and, for anyone who spends the better part of his or her life writing fiction, it is hardly surprising that the pleasures, worries, and mechanics of fiction-making should enter the work.

I had hoped to be a poet, and for a long time I tried to write poetry. My first published pieces were poems.