Afterword to The Dud Avocado (2006)
Context: My success took another road. I complained to Rod Steiger, "The book’s hardly been out and everyone wants to know what I’m going to write next. I mean, don’t I get to rest on my laurels?" In fact I had no idea of writing a second novel. "No," said Rod, answering my question. "Succeeding only means you get another chance to try to do it again."
I thought about it, and then Ken said to me, "If you write another book, I’ll divorce you." I sat down and started my second novel and wondered that I knew its beginning and its end. I put it aside to write a play which went on in London.… I went back to my novel and finished it. It was published to good reviews but now there were a couple of stinkers. I tore them up and flushed them down the toilet. I’d become a writer.
In 1964 Ken and I got divorced. Well, we did bad things to each other. Now, some three decades later, I look back in gratitude at him: I look back in wonder.
Alan Axelrod in an interview with Frank R. Shaw, Aug 23, 2007 http://www.electricscotland.com/familytree/frank/axelrod.htm.
Essay, "Listening". p.59
Writing Down the Bones (1986)
“If you don't see the book you want on the shelves, write it.”
“Write the book you want to read, the one you cannot find.”
As quoted in Boston Globe interview (4 January 1987)
On what led her to write Ayesha At Last in “Interviews with authors at EMWF: Uzma Jalaluddin” https://theontarion.com/2018/09/13/interviews-with-authors-at-emwf-uzma-jalaluddin/ in The Ontarion (2018 Sep 13)
