Many of my short fictions use theatre as a metaphor for situations in which characters find themselves estranged from the larger, uncontrollable world that may or may not lie beyond the proscenium arch.

I do believe we are actors in our own dramas, which, moment by moment, we ourselves write; that we are characters in our own fictions or those devised for us by someone or something else.

Each piece of writing I undertake, whether a story, novel, play, or poem, begins with an image.

The persona in my stories may be truer to my "real" self than any alleged objective, factual "I" that I could replicate for the purposes of storytelling.

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

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