I know that family life in America is a minefield, an economic trap for women, a study in disappointment for both sexes.

I feel that the world needs writers. We need to know what's really going on.

When I grew up, you needed to have straight hair. It's symbolic of needing to be like everyone else, needing to look like everyone else. And what that meant was looking like the dominant ruling class in America.

I know that family life in America is a minefield, an economic trap for women, a study in disappointment for both sexes.

You have to be a lover of books without expecting more of them than they give - a little pleasure, a little insight, a moment of escape, a deepening of your own humanity. Not much else.

You can be creative and not addictive, or addictive and not creative. Most addicted people do not produce anything of remarkable note.

Decay is quiet but ghastly, explosion is dramatic and dreadful. There's not much to choose between the two of them in reality, and most of our lives have sufficient of both.