I measure my life out in books." "You should be measuring your life by living. Correction: you shouldn't be measuring your life. What's the point?

An abiding preoccupation for me is how much of our lives are invisible and unknown by other people like the Chekhov story The Lady With the Little Dog.

And then, into the fantasy, as into a dream, would come the thought: it's not like this anymore; the world has changed. Just the way, even at that time fully two years after my mother's death, I'd catch myself thinking about her as alive; and would suddenly remember, an admonitory finger of grief upon my breast, that she was gone.

There's a reason why trainspotters are not girls, there's a reason why there's the myth of the slightly autistic male genius, there's a reason why Gertrude Stein believed that her self-presentation was male. One could argue that was Susan Sontag also. The things that we associate with femaleness are not the single-minded, exclusive pursuit of a vocation, whether it be art or anything else. It is not a model that is widespread in our culture, it's not something we think of for women.

I've always felt that if a project seems easy, or even attainable, why pursue it? I'll always find the hardest path.

Maybe that, really, is as good a definition as any of an artist in the world: a ruthless person.

Yes, writing is essential to me. It's my way of living in the world.