"He was my neighbor and a true friend. This kind of friend. One day in 1973 he crossed the street to talk to me on my stoop. "Grace," he said, "you now have enough stories for a book." (My last book had been published in 1959.) "Are you sure? I kind of doubt it," I said. "No, you do-go on upstairs and see what you can find in your files-I know I'm right." I spent a week or so extracting stories from folders. He looked at my list at dinner at his house. "You're missing at least two more," he said. "You've got to find them now. I'll wait here." Many others have stories about that kindness to colleagues. We had a sad political parting, which lasted about a year after the 1986 New York International PEN Conference. He considered his position long-term, overriding that year's key speaker. He thought me disloyal and was angry. I was never angry at him, partly because political opposition is more natural to me, but mostly because I never didn't love his fine tragic heart and brilliant work. He smoked and drank in the manner of American writers (his only untransformed cliché) and died of the cancerous sorrow of these addictions. His very breath which made those perfect sentences tormented then broken."