Writers are doubters, compulsives, self-flagellants. The torture only stops for brief moments.

Unhappiness is our element. We come to believe we can't function without it.

In a world not made for women, criticism and ridicule follow us all the days of our lives. Usually they are indications that we are doing something right.

Turning fifty ... is like flying: hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.

If there's anything the world disdains more than uppity young women, it's uppity old women. Dying young has always been a woman's best career move.

perfectionism is the enemy of art. Since art is essentially divine play, not dogged work, it often happens that as one becomes more professionally driven one also becomes less capriciously playful.

The aim of my writing is to utterly remove the distance between author and reader so that the book becomes a sort of semipermeable membrane through which feelings, ideas, nutrients pass.