"You write a thing down because you're hoping to get a hold on it." — Sigrid Nunez

When I was a kid and wanted to grow up to be a writer, I assumed I would be writing about animals and children because that's what I cared about and read about. But I never did.

As an undergraduate, I took two writing workshops taught by Elizabeth Hardwick. She was certainly a major influence, though more as a writer I greatly admired than as a teacher. As for other writers, I think it's safe to say that my work has been and continues to be influenced to one degree or another by every writer whose work I love and admire.

I try to write every day, preferably first thing in the morning. Of course, there are days when something happens to interfere with this ideal schedule. Then I try to find time later in the day. I usually work at home, but sometimes, for a change I'll go to a library or a cafe. And I like to read poetry before I sit down to write.

I first met Susan Sontag in spring 1976 when she was recovering from cancer surgery and needed someone to help type her correspondence. I had been recommended by the editors of 'The New York Review of Books,' where I'd worked as an editorial assistant.

You might not remember what you had for dinner last night, but you remember everything about one particular summer of your youth. It's like that.

Unfortunately, I was like a lot of my own students, who don't really want criticism, just encouragement.

There's a lot of material from my life in my books, but they're not really autobiographical, in the sense that they're not about my life. So, in 'A Feather on the Breath of God' I write about my parents, I write about this Russian immigrant, I write about the world of dance, but it isn't an autobiography; so much is left out.

You don't sit there at twenty-five, unpublished, inexperienced, and respond to Susan Sontag's editorial suggestions like a little snot, rejecting every one of them. But it had a lot to do with the fact that I didn't admire Susan's own fiction.

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You write a thing down because you're hoping to get a hold on it.