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.

Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.

If you just go get one of these little fine arts degrees or writing program degrees, it never forces you to confront your responsibility as narrator, whereas any of the social sciences make you at look the interaction between the storyteller and story.

Beauty, my first girlfriend said to me, is that inner quality often associated with great amounts of leisure time.

I put on the page a third look at what I've seen in life - the reinvented experience of a cross-eyed working-class lesbian, addicted to violence, language and hope, who has made the decision to live, is determined to live, on the page and on the street, for me and mine.

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

And while it is true that I got the best woman in the world, I don't think love saves you.