When I finally made it to the set, I spent a lot of time doing damage control on The Magic Christian.

Someone wrote a piece about Henry Green in The Partisan Review that was so intriguing that I got one of his novels, Loving, I believe, which was the first that came to attention in the United States.

Peter Beard is one of those people I've known a long time. We have an affinity. We share certain values.

I don't know why, but I always feel a kind of necessity to write things that are beyond acceptance, that are too offensive or something. For people to read them and say, Ha-ha-ha, very funny. No, we can't print that.

I learned not to care ... and to write for an imaginary reader whose tastes were similar to my own.

The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock - shock is a worn-out word - but astonish.

David Burnett was the son of Martha Foley, who edited the Best American Short Stories series. She hired me to work with David and her to read stories for the anthology.