You come to doing what you do by not being able to do something.

If you're feminist, it means that you've noticed that male ownership of the direction of female lives has been the order of the day for a few thousand years, and it isn't natural.

I didn't intend to become a short-story writer. I became one because I finished a couple of short stories and realized that's what I wanted to do and could do with children and with all the other things in my life.

Sometimes before people know what they're saying, they already love the language.

To be modest means that you have something to be modest about.

I do lots of reading and speaking at many universities about literature and also about politics, which is as much a part of my life as the literature.

Art is too long, and life is too short.