When I left home at sixteen I bought a small rug. It was my roll-up world. Whatever room, whatever temporary place I had, I unrolled the rug. It was a map of myself. Invisible to others, but held in the rug, were all the places I had stayed - for a few weeks, for a few months. On the first night anywhere new I liked to lie in bed and look at the rug to remind myself that I had what I needed even though what I had was so little. Sometimes you have to live in precarious and temporary places. Unsuitable places. Wrong places. Sometimes the safe place won’t help you.

It is helpful for a woman artist not to have a husband.

...there are two kinds of writing: the one you write and the one that writes you.

I was sixteen and my mother was about to throw me out of the house forever, for breaking a very big rule, even bigger than the forbidden books. The rule was not just No Sex, but definitely No Sex With Your Own Sex.

This hole in my heart is in the shape of you. No one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?

I seem to have run in a great circle, and met myself again on the starting line.

Like all familiar objects, it had become invisible.