I'm still very blunt: If you want to be a writer, get a day job. The fact that I have actually been able to make a living at it is astonishing.

I have a terrible memory.

I think I would have died if there hadn't been the women's movement. It gave me a vision that I could do something different, and it gave me an understanding that I wasn't a monster, or sport, or a betrayer of my family.

The only magic we have is what we make in ourselves, the muscles we build up on the inside, the sense of belief we create from nothing.

I did things I did not understand for reasons I could not begin to explain just to be in motion, to be trying to do something, change something in a world I wanted desperately to make over but could not imagine for myself.

Piece by piece, my mother is being stolen from me.

What's the best thing you can do for your writing? Construct a boring life.