Whenever my mother talks to me, she begins the conversation as if we were already in the middle of an argument.

I always thought it mattered, to know what is the worst possible thing that can happen to you, to know how you can avoid it, to not be drawn by the magic of the unspeakable.

I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not literary; we did not have any books in the house.

You can have pride in what you do each day, but not arrogance in what you were born with.

Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.

When my daughter looks at me, she sees a small old lady. That is because she sees only with her outside eyes. She has no chuming, no inside knowing of things. If she had chuming she would see a tiger lady. And she would have careful fear.

Mothers have the huge influence, and I feel like they're always teaching us from the day we're born what to be afraid of, what to be cautious of, what we should like and what we should look like. Then we spend half of our life trying to be not like them, and then we reach another part of our lives where we see these things we can't get rid of.