I Believe In A Kind Of Fidelity

My Family Were Russian Jews. They Got You To Read As Soon As You Could. And Then Assumed You Would Read A Lot. People Didn't Really Tell Stories But They Were Good Talkers. That's Important For A Writer, To Hear Speakers.

I Loved The Comradeship Of The Sixties And The Seventies, And I Still Maintain Friendships With The People I Worked With Then - The Ones That Are Still Alive. That's One Of The Great Gifts Of Our Political Movements, Great Friendships . . . And Also A Few Enmities.

Art Is Too Long, And Life Is Too Short.

My Language Limitations Here Are Real. My Vocabulary Is Adequate For Writing Notes And Keeping Journals But Absolutely Useless For An Active Moral Life. If I Really Knew This Language, There Would Surely Be In My Head, As There Is In Webster's Or The Dictionary Of American Slang, That Unreducible Verb Designed To Tell A Person Like Me What To Do Next.

I Didn't Intend To Become A Short-story Writer. I Became One Because I Finished A Couple Of Short Stories And Realized That's What I Wanted To Do And Could Do With Children And With All The Other Things In My Life.