Quote

Literature has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I can't think back before a time that I didn't love writing and reading. When I was really young, my mother would read poems to me. I loved Edgar Allan Poe - I am sure I didn't understand it, but I loved it.

I have a huge passion for literature.

I loved reading when I was young. I was just completely taken by stories. And I remember taking that into English literature at school and taking that into Shakespeare and finding that opened up a whole world of self-expression to me that I didn't have access to previously.

I loved to read, still do, and it seemed that the writing was a result of the love of books and reading and libraries.

I love painting and music, of course. I don't know nearly as much about them as I know about poetry. I've certainly been influenced by fiction. I was overwhelmed by War and Peace when I read it, and I didn't read it until I was in my late 20s.

When I was a kid, I went through the whole process of reading great literature and trying to be very widely read.

I also had a tremendous passion for art and read a lot.

I'm sure I've been influenced by every fine writer I've ever read, from Dickens and Austen to Auden and Jane Hirshfield. And also, the short stories of Updike, Cheever, Munro, Alice Adams, and Doris Lessing. And the plays of Oscar Wilde. And paintings by Alice Neel and Matisse.

I'd always been a big reader, and I loved books, and I always thought writing would be a great way to get by in the world.

I primarily read fiction, and I read a good many wonderful books while writing 'The Visibles.'