It was something every child knew how to do, maintain a direct and full connection with the world. Somehow you forgot about it as you grew up, and had to learn it again.

A girl's not a watermelon you plug a hole in to see if it's sweet.

We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.

A changeableness, too, as if beneath my visible face there was another, having second thoughts.

That's the way I will write characters, put a fair amount of myself in them, and then everyone else who was like that person, I will pick and choose.

Now all the mute objects of my life seem to tell my story, to stretch back in time, if I look closely enough.

I spend most of every day writing. I like to write every day if I can. I don't start extremely early.