I am uneasy about the practice of other people telling you how to write. This is especially true for beginners who haven't yet developed their style ….

Imagination is so much more fertile than life..

I was always creatively stubborn, adverse to editing by others, and wanted to use the kind of Ukrainian we spoke among ourselves rather than the more….

How can you teach someone to be creative? You have to create yourself..

I think I view myself primarily as a fiction writer. Poetry is more of a "hobby," a time of rest from the hard work of writing fiction..

Except for the usual house chores, doing income tax, etc., I am free to write whenever I want..

It is true that I didn't write any poetry between 1995 and 2011. The reason for this was probably because I had stayed away from fiction for so long ….

I've done a lot of going back and forth with my own writing, in particular translating my English language stuff into Ukrainian - poetry as well as p….

I always lived in a multilingual society (Polish-Ukrainian, German-Ukrainian, English-Ukrainian), and was open to outside linguistic influences. I th….

I feel that other people's suggestions are very dangerous. Yet, I can't say that they are always destructive or not useful. Perhaps, rather than havi….

I find that biographical material holds me back, hampers my creative process, cramps my imagination..

That is one more reason why I write in English only right now. I prefer writing in the language I hear around me for the people by whom I am surround….

I must say that, on the whole, I prefer fiction to poetry..

In fact, the very phrase "teaching creative writing" sounds to me oxymoronic. How can you teach someone to be creative?.