I'm sometimes afraid I'll cross a line and it'll be difficult to come back, say, to dinner.

It was hollow, my triumph, I could feel that, but I held on to it just the same.

I like to be depressing. I feel it's my duty to make everyone a little less happy. You know that line in the Declaration of Independence, "the pursuit of happiness"? I've come to think that it has no meaning at all. You cannot pursue happiness. And to think that this bad little sentence has determined our lives.

I can write anywhere. I actually wrote more than I ever did when I had small children. My children were never a hindrance.

Race as a subject only comes about because of what I look like. If I say something truthfully, people say "Oh, she's so angry." If I write about a married person who lives in Vermont, it becomes "Oh, she's autobiographical."

What I really want to write about is injustice and justice, and the different ways human beings organize the two.

The garden has taught me to live, to appreciate the times when things are fallow and when they're not.