and she had succeeded, on the second try, in hurling herself out of the world

I think there's a real connection between acting and writing novels because the way I write characters has a little bit to do with the method acting that I was taught in high school and college.

You can tell when something's not moving forward anymore. When the doubts you have about it don't go away.

She was a large, disordered woman, like a child's drawing that didn't stay within the lines.

There have been hermaphrodites around forever, Cal. Forever. Plato said that the original human being was a hermaphrodite. Did you know that? The original person was two halves, one male, one female. Then these got separated. That's why everybody's always searching for their other half. Except for us. We've got both halves already.

She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight.

It was as if, before she`d met him, her blood had circulated grayly around her body, and now ir was all oxygenated and red. She was petrified of becoming the half-alive person she`d been before.