An urban novelist never minds a little decay.

I have noticed before that there is a category of acquaintanceship that is not friendship or business or romance, but speculation, fascination.

Mom was a smoker. My grandfather was a smoker. My aunts were smokers. My uncles were smokers. I don't know any smokers now, not even my mom.

There weren't too many books by women that were taught in school, so I read those on my own, and the books I read were as accessible as the ones we were reading in school.

There is something I have noticed about desire, that it opens the eyes and strikes them blind at the same time.

We sort of read two or three big newspapers but we don't get the flavor of the local events, the local news as much.

Write every day, just to keep in the habit, and remember that whatever you have written is neither as good nor as bad as you think it is. Just keep going, and tell yourself that you will fix it later.