In our world of sleek flesh and collagen, botox and liposuction, what we most fear is the dissolution of the body-mind, the death of the brain.

Once you get older, people stop listening to what you say. It's very agreeable once you get used to it.

Ice burns, and it is hard to the warm-skinned to distinguish one sensation, fire, from the other, frost.

I think there are a lot more important things than art in the world. But not to me.

I hated being a novelist when I was 20 - I had nothing to write about.

You did not so much mind being -conventionally- betrayed, if you were not kept in the dark, which was humiliating, or defined only as a wife and dependent person, which was annihilating.

Well, I would hardly say I do write as yet. But I write because I like words. I suppose if I liked stone I might carve. I like words. I like reading. I notice particular words. That sets me off.