Sometimes you can do things for others that you can't do for yourself.

I'm feeling how profoundly my family disappointed me and in the end how I retreated, how I became nothing, because that was much less risky than attempting to be something, to be anything in the face of such contempt.

I liked the fact she understood how we all have little secret habits that seem normal enough to us, but which we know better than to mention out loud.

I'm very interested in compassion - compassion for oneself and others. I write about very complicated characters and experiences and try to do it without judging the character or the action.

I think about how truly interesting and odd it is that when a woman marries, traditionally she loses her name, becoming absorbed by the husband's family name - she is in effect lost, evaporated from all records under her maiden name. I finally understand the anger behind feminism - the idea that as a woman you are property to be conveyed between your father and your husband, but never an individual who exists independently. And on the flip side, it is also one of the few ways one can legitimately get lost - no one questions it.

I'm nothing you can catch now. I am black powder, I am singe, I am the bomb that bursts the night.

Books tell you more about their owners than the owners do.