She sits in her usual ample armchair, with piles of books and unopened magazines around her. She sips cautiously from the mug of weak herb tea which is now her substitute for coffee. At one time she thought that she could not live without coffee, but it turned out that it is really the warm large mug she wants in her hands, that is the aid to thought or whatever it is she practices through the procession of hours, or of days.

I want my stories to be something about life that causes people to say, not, oh, isn't that the truth, but to feel some kind of reward from the writing, and that doesn't mean that it has to be a happy ending or anything, but just that everything the story tells moves the reader in such a way that you feel you are a different person when you finish.

My head was a magpie's nest lined with such bright scraps of information.

For years and years I thought that stories were just practice, till I got time to write a novel.

The complexity of things - the things within things - just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple.

You cannot let your parents anywhere near your real humiliations.

The conversation of kisses. Subtle, engrossing, fearless, transforming.