I remember reading The Bluest Eye when I was a young parent, and something opened in me. That's the highest aspiration.

Humor is what happens when we're told the truth quicker and more directly than we're used to.

When you do something that's going to speak to people, it's going to be because you're really allowing all of yourself to the table in an accepting way.

In the reason that the contrast between the absolute and the relative is so terrible is because we believe so fully in ourselves as permanent, continuous, and central. I feel insane saying this, but if one weren't so deluded about the permanent reality of the self, a lot of this pain would actually lessen.

I'm not a natural criticizer - I prefer to like and praise and so on.

As Flannery O'Connor says, a person can choose what she writes but she can't choose what she makes live. Some people are really acoustic writers and so for them the secret revision is sound. Other people may revise in terms of the way a paragraph feels. There's a million ways to do it.

I'm always aware of writing around things I can't do, and I've come to think that that's actually what 'style' is - an avoidance of your deficiencies.