Mylife might be little and boring, but at least it’s mine - not some assembly-line, secondhand, hand-me-down life.

As a child of the 1970s, I couldn't hold a narrative in my head; I was lucky if I could hold a joke in my head, because every time you turn on television or radio, it wipes the slate clean - at least in my case. After I gave up television, I found I could carry longer and longer stories or ideas in my head and put them together until I was carrying an entire short story. That's pretty much when I started writing.

Find joy in everything you choose to do. Every job, relationship, home... it's your responsibility to love it, or change it.

Kids, she says. When they’re little, they believe everything you tell them about the world. As a mother, you’re the world almanac and the encyclopedia and the dictionary and the Bible, all rolled up together. But after they hit some magic age, it’s just the opposite. After that, you’re either a liar or a fool or a villain.

The avant-garde in every field consists of the lonely, the friendless, the uninvited. All progress is the product of the unpopular.

I remember selling my first short story and thinking, Oh my god, I sold something for fifty dollars! That gives me the authority to say I'm a writer and to actually write more things! It legitimized the activity.

My point is, that if I'm honest, my life is all about me.