Writers have to have a knack for listening. I need to be able to hear what is being said to me by the voices I create.

When pieces of work speak to us in a way that feels as if they were made just for us, those become our private worlds that we return to.

Whatever it is that pulls the pin, that hurls you past the boundaries of your own life into a brief and total beauty, even for a moment, it is enough.

What you eat is the most political thing you do every day

I knew it like destiny, and at the same time, I knew it as choice.

I think of myself in a continuum as a woman. Two hundred years ago, it would have been very difficult for me to write at all.

Part fact part fiction is what life is. And it is always a cover story. I wrote my way out.