Gainfully unemployed, very proud of it, too.

I don't think that most women have to prove that they're real women. You live long enough, you graduate to being real.

Short story characters, mine anyway, are usually driven by impulse, not so much by their histories and the choices that they have to make.

Everybody should customize their names.

It's better to be nominated for awards than not to be nominated for them, but of course to some degree such awards [National Book Award] are always subjective.

What's agitating about solitude is the inner voice telling you that you should be mated to somebody, that solitude is a mistake. The inner voice doesn't care about who you find. It just keeps pestering you, tormenting you.

Before, I was always trying to make my relationships work by means of willpower and forced affability. This time I didn't have to strive for anything. A quality of ease spread over us.