A book's flaws make it less predictable.

The cake had a trick candle that wouldn't go out, so I didn't get my wish. Which was just that it would always be like this, that my life could be a party just for me.

Women always put men first. That's how everything got so screwed up.

Love could never bloom in a concrete block room.

If I get ideas independently of the act of writing, they never really fit. So for me, there's no hanging out, waiting for inspiration.

They wanted the real mother, the blood mother, the great womb, mother of fierce compassion, a woman large enough to hold all the pain, to carry it away. What we needed was someone who bled...mother's big enough, wide enough for us to hide in...mother's who would breathe for us when we could not breathe anymore, who would fight for us, who would kill for us, die for us.

For she is my love, and other women are but big bodies of flame.