Know your literary tradition, savor it, steal from it, but when you sit down to write, forget about worshiping greatness and fetishizing masterpieces.

For many American-Jewish writers, the dominant motifs have been cultural, secular, sometimes comic, often satirical. Writing about the religious component of Judaism, I found my own themes independent of the New York experience and the immigrant experience.

In novels like 'Kaaterskill Falls', I've been able to write sympathetically about religious people - and beyond that, I've been able to take a religious point of view - because belief does not anger or embarrass me.

Love your material. Nothing frightens the inner critic more than the writer who loves her work. The writer who is enamored of her material forgets all about censoring herself. She doesn't stop to wonder if her book is any good, or who will publish it, or what people will think. She writes in a trance, losing track of time, hearing only her characters in her head.

I think poetry bridges text and image. Poetry is visual in its imagery - but it requires close attention to words themselves. Words become jewels in poetry, while they are often tools in other genres.

Women hate each other in science. You know why? Because the few that are around were trained by men. They survived by being twice as good and twice as competitive and twice as badass as the guys.

Know your literary tradition, savor it, steal from it, but when you sit down to write, forget about worshiping greatness and fetishizing masterpieces.