I Mourn In Grey, Grey As The

Now That I Am In My Forties, She [my Mother] Tells Me I'm Beautiful; Now That I Am In My Forties, She Sends Me Presents And We Have The Long, Personal And Even Remarkably Honest Phone Calls I Always Wanted So Intensely I Forbade Myself To Imagine Them. How Strange. Perhaps Shaw Was Correct And If We Lived To Be Several Hundred Years Old, We Would Finally Work It All Out. I Am Deeply Grateful. With My Poems, I Finally Won Even My Mother. The Longest Wooing Of My Life.

Never Doubt That You Can Change History. You Already Have.

If I Observe My Cats Carefully, It Is Partly Because I Observe Everyone I Deal With As Carefully As I Can And Partly Because They Amuse And Entertain Me. They Are An Important Part Of The Fabric Of My Daily Life.

My Grandmother Was Very Important To Me. She Gave Me My Religious Education. She Gave Me A Sense Of The Female Side Of Judaism, Of The Rich Store Of Stories And Legends Of The Women Of The Schtetl.

In Fiction, I Exercise My Nosiness. I Am As Curious As My Cats, And Indeed That Has Led To Trouble Often Enough And Used Up Several Of My Nine Lives. I Am An Avid Listener. I Am Fascinated By Other People's Lives, The Choices They Make And How That Works Out Through Time, What They Have Done And Left Undone, What They Tell Me And What They Keep Secret And Silent, What They Lie About And What They Confess, What They Are Proud Of And What Shames Them, What They Hope For And What They Fear. The Source Of My Fiction Is The Desire To Understand People And Their Choices Through Time.