I never feel so alive as when I'm writing and the work is going well.

My parents made the decision never to focus on my looks, and I had no sense of myself as beautiful.

As a fiction writer, that's been a preoccupation of mine: Can you really just close the door and leave the past back there behind you, or is the door going to blow open at some point?

Our minds have a tendency to wander. To duck and feint and keep us at a slight remove from the moment at hand.

When I sit down with my notebook, when I start scribbling words across the page, I find out what I’m feeling.

A writer with her work needs to be like a dog with a bone all the time. She needs to know where she's hidden it. Where she's stored the good stuff. She needs to keep gnawing at it, even after all the meat seems to be gone. When a student of mine says (okay, whines) that she's impatient, or tired, or the worst: isn't it good enough? this may be harsh, but she loses just a little bit of my respect. Because there is no room for impatience, or exhaustion, or self-satisfaction, or laziness. All of these really mean, simply, that the inner censor has won the day.

Open your hearts. Deep inside ourselves, we are all one and the same.