I'm not so sure that I can teach people how to, you know, write dialogue or create plot or anything like that. But if I can get them and grab them by the scruff of the neck and say, you can do this, and if I see that fire in their eyes, that's when I think I know a writer.

She takes another long haul, lets the smoke settle in her lungs-- she has heard somewhere that cigarettes are good for grief. One long drag and you forget how to cry. The body too busy dealing with the poison.

She was forever tilted sideways by the notion that pain was inevitable, chance was cruel, and all human ingenuity should go towards the making of a good cup of tea.

I write articles, and I do profiles of members of organizations and associations.

It had never occurred to me before but everything in New York is built upon another thing, nothing is entirely by itself, each thing as strange as the last, and connected.

The contemporary American novelist benefits in a way from being ignored. It makes you angrier and makes you want to go into all of those places where you shouldnt.

Yet she likes complications. She wishes she could turn and say: I like people who unbalance me.