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For everyone I know who is a writer, there was some awkward time in their lives when they had to learn to call themselves one.

I don't call myself a writer.

I still think of myself really as a New Yorker.

I majored in journalism at Arizona State University, where I began writing the columns I write now, but I cannot, in good conscience, refer to myself as a writer. I'm a columnist, maybe a journalist, I guess I'm an author, but writer... no. That's not up to me to call myself, that's rather lofty. It's for the reader to decide.

At one point, I had a story accepted at the 'New Yorker,' which sent off weird bells in people when I told them - 'Oh,' they thought, 'now you are a writer' - where I really had been for the last 30-odd years.

I've never thought of myself as a writer. I still don't, despite all the writing I've done.

I thought I would write non-fiction. I thought I would enter the New York literary scene as copy editor, work my way up, and then write my own books.

I like to think of myself as an unmediated novelist - or perhaps a national novelist.

I don't remember a time when I didn't define myself as a writer.

I don't really consider myself a writer.