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My family was always playing with words. It is little wonder that even after I got serious about writing, I've had a hard time getting serious about words.

My being a writer and playing Scrabble are connected. If I have a good writing day, I'll take a break and play online Scrabble. My favorite word as a child was 'carrion,' before I knew what it meant. I later created crossword puzzles, which was a lot about puns, and how words would create these strange, strange things.

What I wrote all the time when I was a kid - I don't want to call it 'poetry,' because it wasn't poetry. I was not that kind of a writer. I was a rhymer. I was a fan of Dorothy Parker's, so maybe I wrote poetry to that extent, but my main focus was the humor of it, and word construction, and the slant. Your words, it's a very powerful experience.

From as long as, literally as far back as I can remember I've liked puns, word jokes, I can literally recall looking at a comic at the age of six or seven and I remember what I enjoyed and what it was precisely and how the joke worked.

I've included these little jokes and mysteries in my writing for the amusement of readers.

I grew up in an atmosphere where words were an integral part of culture.

I have felt great advances in my poetry, the main one being a growing victory over word nuances and a superfluity of adjectives.

It was the enchantment of spoken verse that led me to write for children.

I grew up in an environment of jokes and sarcasm and puns. I talk that way, so I write that way.

Puns are a form of humor with words.