The words carry their own momentum. A confession in motion tends to stay in motion. Newton's first law of jealousy.

It's useful to know how much society's holding you back. My mother would talk about how she was told by the head of her art school that she was the best painter, but that she wouldn't get the biggest prize because she would waste her talent by having children. I think we have to get honest with girls about how they can expect the world to block them, and we have to prepare girls, and ourselves, to break through those blocks.

The hardest part is believing in yourself at the notebook stage. It is like believing in dreams in the morning.

My generation of young female writers discovered that we could dictate the form and content of our own fiction.

Books go out into the world, travel mysteriously from hand to hand, and somehow find their way to the people who need them at the times when they need them ... Cosmic forces guide such passings-along.

I don't believe in organized religion. I believe that people should try to connect with their own life force and let it lead them to do with their lives what they will find satisfying.

I convinced myself that sadness and compromise were the ways of the world.