When I ruin someone else’s story because I think mine is better, so butt in before they’ve finished theirs.

Shyness. It really held me back when I was younger, and I wish it hadn’t. I do a better job of not being so shy these days.

If I had a trait that I truly deplored, I would work to erase or modify it…Probably, a lack of discipline. (Though people think that I write quickly, & don’t revise, quite the reverse is true.) To myself, I work very slowly & painstakingly, & am often frustrated by accomplishing so little. My friend Margaret Atwood has said that in the late afternoon she is likely to be overcome by a feeling of desperation that she has accomplished so little that day, & this is a feeling I share, often. It seems that I waste most of my time gazing out the window here at my (overgrown) garden; & when I am in Berkeley, where I spend about one-third of the year, I am forever gazing out the window toward the San Francisco Bay & a continually changing, always-beautiful sky.

I’m terribly impatient.

Anywhere, during the 2 to 24 hours after a successful joke.

Child, loss or damage thereof.

People who are proud of their ignorance.

A glass of wine at sunset on Fire Island. / No homework.

Cathy Rigby. She was really good in that stage version of Peter Pan. No joke.

A willingness to come uptown.