When I was awarded a fellowship in poetry by the National Endowment for the Arts (for "Alphabets"), I felt myself suddenly (vaingloriously) equal to ….

I do believe we are actors in our own dramas, which, moment by moment, we ourselves write; that we are characters in our own fictions or those devise….

It may be old hat, but I see no reason to close off what is for me a fruitful subject of inquiry, especially so for one, like me, who is very much in….

Many of my short fictions use theatre as a metaphor for situations in which characters find themselves estranged from the larger, uncontrollable worl….

Theatre aside, my penchant for the extended monologue began with my reading of Browning's dramatic monologues, in high school. My inclination to adop….

I don't know about ground rules; but I create the world that arrives with the characters or situation or voice in my head that instigates the piece, ….

For me, fiction's great gift - to writer and reader, alike - is freedom..

Each piece of writing I undertake, whether a story, novel, play, or poem, begins with an image..

The persona in my stories may be truer to my "real" self than any alleged objective, factual "I" that I could replicate for the purposes of storytell….

I tell myself that, regardless of what source I draw on, I'm writing a new work for reasons peculiar to me and not an adaptation, and so feel, in the….

Metaphysics notwithstanding, I also insert myself in my fictions for no loftier purpose than to give me pleasure: to see myself performing onstage..

I very much like the idea of the unreliable narrator. Shaping my fictions as monologues - by introducing the "I" - allows me to be as unreliable as I….

I used to teach writing in a federal prison, and for my students' benefit, I would liken the narrative use of this highly personal point of view to a….

Because of an instability at my own core, it comforts me to live, fixed, within a story. If reading is our consolation for having been allotted only ….

My fictional worlds were those of a fabulist, of an intellectual fantasist. I was the lawgiver, and the countries and inhabitants of my imagination w….

I had hoped to be a poet, and for a long time I tried to write poetry. My first published pieces were poems..

Emotional, physical, and spiritual estrangement and ontological and religious doubt inform my personality, my thoughts, and my characters, which are,….

I do seem to favor a deathbed confession as the occasion for my dramatic monologues..

I'm too ambitious to give another man credit, even if that other man is only myself in disguise..

I haven't the stature to critique one of our literature's great novels, Tobias; and I'm not one of those who believe The Adventures of Huckleberry Fi….

My fondness for extended monologue might have been encouraged by two decades of writing stage and radio dramas..