Despite all the cynical things writers have said about writing for money, the truth is we write for love. That is why it is so easy to exploit us.

This is the sad bed of chosen chastity because you are miles and mountains away.

There is still the feeling that women's writing is a lesser class of writing, that what goes on in the nursery or the bedroom is not as important as what goes on in the battlefield, that what women know about is a less category of knowledge.

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

As a reader, I want a book to kidnap me into its world. Its world must make my so-called real world seem flimsy. Its world must lure me to return. When I close the book, I should feel bereft.

A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.

Sex is God's joke on the human race ... if we didn't have sex to make us ridiculous, She would have had to think up something else instead.