...our best task is to move forward without insisting others slide backward.

Perhaps growing up meant we put our knives away and feigned ignorance of the damage.

Alice wonders if other women in the middle of the night have begun to resent their Formica.

The talkers are rising above the thinkers.

I don't *ever* write about real people. Art is supposed to be better than that. If you want a slice of life, look out the window.

What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in & out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?

I can count all the ways in which being a mother has enriched my understanding of the world, of character, my sense of the future and my attachment to it. I can't imagine what kind of writer I'd be if I didn't have my kids.