I think it's harder than ever to be an artist. I think that you end up, especially as a middle-aged person, you pay such big consequences for saying, 'I'm just going to devote my life to making art,' or 'I'm going to devote my life to writing novels.' You end up with no resources.

I think most writers have to have a practice of writing. For me it is very early in the morning. I try to make it a separate world from the rest of my life.

I don't have a lot of skills, but one thing I can do is, I can compartmentalize. I can make that a little world that I can go back to, so I can be a waitress, or I can be a teacher, and then go and work on my book.

My teaching exists in a different part of my brain. However, I am lucky enough to teach very smart graduate students.

Most human things are full of conflict and ambivalence, not ease and simplicity. The world has grown increasingly fundamentalist, and the parameters of discussion have become narrowed. People, when they're fearful, are vulnerable to certainty in rhetoric.

I am one Dana when I am talking to my daughter, another when I am talking to the IRS, and another still when I do an interview. These characters are just extreme versions of ordinary human self-switching.

The writer has to be brave, I think.