I'll tell you the secret. When you begin with a character, you want to begin by creating a villain.

I have wanted everything as a writer and a woman, but most of all a world changed utterly by my revelations.

One of the strengths I derive from my class background is that I am accustomed to contempt.

... suffering does not ennoble. It destroys. To resist destruction, self-hatred, or lifelong hopelessness, we have to throw off the conditioning of being despised, the fear of becoming the they that is talked about so dismissively, to refuse lying myths and easy moralities, to see ourselves as human, flawed, and extraordinary. All of us extraordinary

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 don't believe that there is any true friendship without a bond of honor, and the honor in friendship is the respect you give the other that she also gives you.

Class, race, sexuality, gender and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other need to be excavated from the inside.