There's a lot of water in everything I've ever written. There's always oceans and pools.

Early in the phase of being in a female body, there's all this desire that comes at you, a lot of it hostile, a lot of it dangerous, a lot of it ruinous.

I know that I was able to find my way out of most of my feelings by writing.

You have to want something or you're finished.

When you're waiting for a bus, the thing to do is smoke a cigarette.

Teaching writing puts you on the point of a pin in terms of what you want your own writing to be.

There's a quote that I learned in college a million years ago. "Happy, thought I, is the man who can, in one and the same embrace, hold both his love and the object of his love." Holding the feeling that you have and all the images that you've got and all the fantasies and romantic associations while also holding the actual core person that's been saddled with all of this.