Art's Too Long And Life's Too Short.

It Wasn't Until I Lived In The Countryside That I Began To Understand The Life Of The Countryside And The People In It And Trees And Water. Just Learning About Water Is An Education For A City Person.

But What's A Writer For? The Whole Point Is To Put Yourself Into Other Lives, Other Heads-writers Have Always Done That. If You Screw Up, So Someone Will Tell You, That's All.

Art Is Too Long, And Life Is Too Short.

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.

I Read A Lot. I Liked A Tremendous Number Of Poets And Writers. The Person Whose Work I Liked The Most Was Joyce.