In real life I avoid all parties altogether, but on paper I can mingle with the best of them

I mean you're given all these lessons for the unimportant things--piano-playing, typing. You're given years and years of lessons in how to balance equations, which Lord knows you will never have to do in normal life. But how about parenthood? Or marriage, either, come to think of it. Before you can drive a car you need a state-approved course of instruction, but driving a car is nothing, nothing, compared to living day in and day out with a husband and raising up a new human being.

For my own family, I would always choose the makeshift, surrogate family formed by various characters unrelated by blood.

None of my own experiences ever finds its way into my work. However, the stages of my life - motherhood, middle age, etc. - often influence my subject matter.

I don't type [when I write] because . . . I often have the feeling that everything flows directly from my right hand.

I save the best of myself for novels, and I believe it shows

Sooner or later, even the sharpest pain became flattened.