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After my stellar first grade academic achievements, I continued to perform well in the city primary schools - except for penmanship, which was not my forte.

Penmanship means a lot to me. I don't have cursive penmanship, though. I've created my own penmanship. It's very clear. Everyone can read it. I write things down all day long.

Association with my pupils has kept me young in my work. Criticism of their work has kept my own point of view clear.

I have maintained a passionate interest in education, which leads me occasionally to make foolish and ill-considered remarks alleging that not everything is well in our schools.

I'm a good scholar when it comes to reading but a blotting kind of writer when you give me a pen.

I'm not a typical public school boy.

Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.

What a thrill it is to have my writing recognized by an institution as admirable and vital as the National Endowment for the Arts.

By and large, the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself, but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is, after all, a form of communication.

I don't mean it to sound egomaniacal, but in a way, for me, it was very useful to imagine that I was the only one who was taking pen in hand. I'd always been told that it was impossible to be published, so I was writing only for myself.