A tourist is an ugly human being.

Once you cease to be a master, once you throw off your master's yoke, you are no longer human rubbish, you are a human being, and all the things that adds up to. So, too, with the slaves. Once they are no longer slaves, once they are free, they are no longer noble and exalted; they are just human beings.

I used to want to be a backup singer. Not a lead singer, because I really can't sing.

Gardening is really an extended form of reading, of history and philosophy. The garden itself has become like writing a book. I walk around and walk around. Apparently people often see me standing there and they wave to me and I don't see them because I am reading the landscape.

I would be lost without the feeling of antagonism that people have towards me. I write out of defiance.

The thing we call romance is a diversion from something truer, which is life.

I don't feel I'm angry. I feel as though I'm describing something true. If I had stabbed my husband, I could understand being called "angry." If I had an affair with my husband's best friend and written about that experience, I could see the anger. But I'm not doing that.