My mother was a woman who was very frustrated. She had a great deal of ability, and all this energy went into me and my brother.

There is a great line of women stretching out behind you into the past, and you have to seek them out and find them in yourself and be conscious of them.

[Some people think] that storytelling is telling jokes. So they have to be discouraged! Then others think that storytelling-is like an encounter group . . .

[On her mother:] I was in nervous flight from her ever since I can remember anything, and from the age of fourteen I set myself obdurately against her in a kind of inner emigration from everything she represented. Girls do have to grow up, but has this battle always been so implacable?

I've always disliked words like inspiration. Writing is probably like a scientist thinking about some scientific problem, or an engineer about an engineering problem.

I never stopped reading.

Envy has always hidden behind moral indignation.