Marie Calloway has a very specific literary personality that the reader is intrigued by: she's masochistic, loves to experiment, is quickly bored and intermittently self-hating, very hip, rebellious. Figuring her out is a gripping adventure.

I'm an atheist, I always thought, 'This is it.' If there is going to be a heaven, it should be on earth. I feel much happier than most people. I'm fairly stoic about death, but I'm not keen on dying if it's going to be long and protracted. I don't have dark nights of the soul, except occasionally. I'm such a little busy bee.

There was something stubborn in me that didn't want to lose weight to attract a man. If the right man came along, he'd be able to see my virtues magically. Once he kissed me, the frog would turn into a prince. I had become a trick question, a heavy disguise, but behind the disobliging exterior was the welcoming child I would always be. Of course, what I'd forgotten was that he was not Parsifal and I was not the Grail; the medievalism of my imagination was not sufficiently up-to-date to recognize that the lover was a shopper and I a product.

Ive always seen writing as a way of telling the truth. For me, writing is about truth. I have always tried to be faithful to my own experience.

Of course the success of A Boy's Own Story took me utterly off guard.

When we are young... we often experience things in the present with a nostalgia-in-advance, but we seldom guess what we will truly prize years from now.

Tennessee Williams recognized that great theater begins with great talkers, and that great talkers obey two rules: they never sound like anyone else and they never say anything directly.