In my perception, the world wasn't a graph or formula or an equation. It was a story.

I think a lot of people have the idea of an editor being someone who comes in like a dictator, and says, "You can't have that scene." And it never is like that - or perhaps some editors are like that and they're assholes, and they're not good editors. A good editor actually says, "I respect you" and they understand that you have a vision and they're actually trying to help you realize it.

Be about ten times more magnanimous than you believe yourself capable of. Your life will be a hundred times better for it.

I didn't feel sad or happy. I didn't feel proud or ashamed. I only felt that in spite of all the things I'd done wrong, in getting myself here, I'd done right.

How wild it was, to let it be.

The amount that she loved us was beyond her reach. It could not be quantified or contained. It was the ten thousand named things in the Tao Te Ching’s universe and then ten thousand more. Her love was full-throated and all-encompassing and unadorned. Every day she blew through her entire reserve.

It's still true that literary works by women, gays, and writers of color are often framed as specific, rather than universal, small rather than big, personal or particular rather than socially significant.