In the same way, the people whom I most abhor, I abhor them for elements that I abhor in myself.

Sometimes, in my published complaints about not being a writer, I have recalled the prospect - the yearning to be a writer - as it first formed for me.

Now that I'm more middle class, I have access to consumer goods. I do enjoy feminine frippery, feminine doo-da, stuff like that.

In Among the White Moon Faces, I wrote about my desire to be a writer as rooted in my obsessive hours of reading English novels and poetry. It was that spur, that desire, that pushed me to set aside love and marriage in my early twenties.

When someone asks me now, "What do you do?" I will be able to say, "I am a writer."

I had to do the academic writing. At a top research university, publishing of a certain kind is very important. So your friend is right. You can't do three things well.

You've read some of the poems in this new unpublished book [Walker's Alphabet], e.g., the poem "C." I have a number of poems whose titles are letters of the alphabet: A, B, C, D, E, F.