I Didn't Write Any Fiction Until I

I've Started Many Novels, And They All Ended On Page Seven.

My Job Is To Get People To Write Something Truthful, Something About Truth And Beauty - Wherever They Are - And To Understand How Literature Is Made. And Then If They Become Great Writers, That's Great, And Probably Has Nothing To Do With Me.

I Don't Have Any Degrees. I Went To Hunter College One Year And New York University Another Year. It's Just On The Basis Of My Books That I've Been Hired At Any Of The Places I've Been.

It's A Terrible Thing To Die Young. Still, It Saves A Lot Of Time.

When I Was About Twenty-one, I Published A Few Poems. Maybe I Wrote A Couple Of Stories Before, But I Really Began To Write Stories In My Mid-thirties. My Kids Were Still Little, And They Were In School And Day Care, And I Had Begun To Think A Lot About Wanting To Tell Some Stories And Not Being Able To Do It In Poetry.