People think that they will sit down and produce the great American novel in one sitting. It doesn't work that way. This is a very patient and meticulous work, and you have to do it with joy and love for the process, not for the outcome.

At my age days dissolve like salt in water; the day's gone and I don't even know what I've done with the hours.

If, for example, I saw my grandparents or my daughter for an instant, would I recognize them? Probably not, because in looking so hard for a way to keep them alive, remembering them in the most minimal details, I have been changing them, adorning them with qualities they may not have had. I have given them a destiny much more complex than the ones they lived.

I've been a story-teller all my life but I realized it only recently.

Feminism has never been sexy, but let me assure you that it never stopped me from flirting, and I have seldom suffered from lack of men.

Music is a wind that blows away the years, memories, and fear, that crouching animal I carry inside me.

Someone has said that conversation is sex for the soul.