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

A first-person voice helps to ensure the uniformity and cohesiveness of the narrative; it gathers unto itself incidents and characters in its unstoppable progress toward the story's end.

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, whatever form it may take.

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

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 end, justified in singing it my way.

Eventually, I came to believe, stupidly, that I had exhausted that story's "original" form with its single use. I went on to other stories, other forms and genres.

I admitted that I did not understand life. What I meant was that I am bewildered by human hearts and motivations, including my own.

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 like.

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

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

When I was awarded a fellowship in poetry by the National Endowment for the Arts (for "Alphabets"), I felt myself suddenly (vaingloriously) equal to my Crow, which would be - I knew at once - Rat.

Today like every day roughly 5, 000 people on the face of the planet will experience one-chance-in-a-million things and not one of them will refuse to believe the evidence of their senses.

In God, the characteristics of men and women that we admire in men and women are combined. That's been a traditional Catholic teaching that God is the combination of opposites.

I live below my means because it makes what I do seem less like a job and more like a passion.

The neurotic always wishes people would let him alone - until they do.

I did not grow up watching much TV and film. I had a very, very, very, very, very, very church family, and a lot of, like, secular stuff was not around my house.

Everyone you see is you in a different time & space.

An egalitarian educational system is necessarily opposed to meritocracy and reward for achievement. It is inevitably opposed to procedures that might reveal differing levels of achievement.

Quality, affordable housing is a key element of a strong and secure Iowa.

We bow our heads before Thee, and we laud, And magnify thy name Almighty God! But man is thy most awful instrument, In working out a pure intent.

...choose to deal with inhumane situations in a humane way, we can turn the world around and create positive lessons for ourselves and for others.