You can't be creative and still be a good girl.

Is there a phrase in the English language more fraught with menace than a tax audit?

Murky language means someone wants to pick your pocket.

It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.

I know so many women in their fifties, sixties and seventies who delight in being on their own. It's amazing. They don't see any stigma attached to it. We don't need a man to prove our identity anymore.

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

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