Over the years I found that there were several stories I had repeated innumerable times. I never got tired of telling them and people seemed to enjoy them. Whether it was driving a forklift, playing Gloucester in King Lear or whatever, the stories seemed to resonate with people. Either they had done something similar, or had never done anything like that in their life. What was important to me was it interested them. I thought maybe a wider range of people would get a kick out of them, so here they are.

Is this is where I get to name obscure authors with unpronounceable names, pretending to be seriously well-read? Sorry, I lean toward the humorists; Mark Twain, Woody Allen, Calvin Trillin. Mr. Trillin's story of how he gets visitors out of his New York apartment is something that's always resonated with me. For great storytelling, James Michener, Nelson DeMille, Ken Follett. His "Pillars of the Earth" series is my favorite.

Friends would come to stay "a day or two," but stay for weeks. He would take them down to SoHo to a chicken who could play Tic-Tac-Toe by puncturing the paper under it that was printed with the grid with its talon. If they lost, they'd have to leave. The chicken won every time. What was interesting was when the visitors lost they all had the same reaction, which was to get furious and say, "The chicken got to go first!"

Debt.

In a creative writing class. I wrote an awful story about a man who lost his wife, so he hung himself. My thing was efficient writing, and on that count, I succeeded wildly. It was barely half a page. I didn't know what to write, obviously. The teacher handed it back with a red "F" scratched across it and told me not to worry. In everyone's first story someone either hangs himself, or jumps out a window. But he repeated how awful the story was.

I don't have one, at least I never learned one. I write down things that happen around me that might make a good story. Some work, most don't. I just keep looking.

I can't draw anything. I'm a grown man and I still draw stick figures. I'm fascinated with people tell me they sat down one day and drew a tree, or a castle, or a car. So I depended on Marie de Rémur, who came up with the cover for "A View with a Room." For "Don't Forget the Ketchup" I tried to draw some theater chairs. She just stared at me, so I told her the story of having to sit in the theater for eight hours in my bathrobe and slippers awaiting my turn to perform the Edgar/Gloucester scene from King Lear.

Ask Eric. Or better, read the story.

Everything. It's so satisfying when someone says, "I really liked that story about…," or better when they say they are glad it was me and not them. That means a lot to me. It means the story worked.

Someone once told me their definition of a classic is a book you wish you had read. I have a stack of classics on my night stand that slipped through the cracks somehow; The Picture of Dorian Gray, All Quiet on the Western Front, Robinson Crusoe. Right now I'm reading Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Next is Ry Cooder's Los Angeles Stories. If he writes half as well as he plays guitar, wow.