I don't think I would have been a writer if I hadn't been a mother. I wanted to construct something that contained some of these feelings that I had, some of these discoveries or revelations.

Write the book you want to read, the one you cannot find.

Our friendship is made up of these brief frenzied exchanges, but the quality of our conversation, for all its feverish outpouring, is genuine.

There are chapters in every life which are seldom read and certainly not aloud.

Words are our life. We are human because we use language. So I think we are less human when we use less language.

Anyone's childhood can be an act of disablement if rehearsed and replayed and squinted at in a certain light. . .

We are too kind, too willing--too unwilling too--reaching out blindly with a grasping hand but not knowing how to ask for what we don't even know we want.