I think there's no question that there's a reason why small children make great art and why slightly bigger children don't. And it's because small children don't worry about what anybody else thinks and slightly bigger children start to worry about these things.

I wanted to write a voice that for me, as a reader, had been missing from the chorus: the voice of an angry woman.

To my mind, Guernica is the most important online intellectual and literary journal in America today.

Life's funny. You have to find a way to keep going, to keep laughing, even after you realize that none of your dreams will come true. When you realize that, there's still so much of a life to get through.

Popular success is a wonderful gift if it happens, but like money, it's not the motivation. The effort to create a work of art that is true and potentially lasting, that is the very best work of art you can create at that point in your life - a book that may only reach or move a few people but will seem to people somehow transformative. That's the ideal; that's always the motivation.

I’m not a writing group member, not a joiner in that way. I don’t seek a wide swath of feedback.

If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble.