I Like To Get Ten Pages A

I Have Spent A Good Many Years Since―too Many, I Think―being Ashamed About What I Write. I Think I Was Forty Before I Realized That Almost Every Writer Of Fiction Or Poetry Who Has Ever Published A Line Has Been Accused By Someone Of Wasting His Or Her God-given Talent. If You Write (or Paint Or Dance Or Sculpt Or Sing, I Suppose), Someone Will Try To Make You Feel Lousy About It, That's All.

She Is A Cat With A Burning Tail, An Ant Under A Microscope, A Fly About To Lose Its Wings To The Curious Plucking Fingers Of A Third-grader On A Rainy Day, A Game For Bored Children With No Bodies And The Whole Universe At Their Feet.

Overhead Was A Sky Blacker Than Jewlers' Velvet, And A Billion Stars Screamed Down.

Of All The Questions I'm Asked, The Most Difficult Is, "how Does It Feel To Be Famous?" Since I'm Not, That Question Always Catches Me With A Feeling Of Surrealism....i've Got Three Kids And I've Changed All Their Diapers, And When It's Two O'clock In The Morning And You're Changing Something That's Sort Of Special Delivery With One Eye Open And One Eye Shut You Don't Feel Famous.

I Know Your Mother Lives In Your Head - Almost Everyone's Mother Does, I Guess - But You Can't Let Her Have Her Way On This One