A lack of narrative structure, as you know, will cause anxiety.

The purpose of the first draft is not to get it right, but to get it written.

Love is always a surprise and you never get it right.

I sat around the kitchen every Sunday afternoon listening to my mother and aunts talk about the people in the neighborhood. Gossip - I loved it. And that turns out to be the writer's job: to attend to the gossip and spread it as far as you can.

Pleasure is, after all, a luxury. It's love that's essential.

We all sleep with the corpses of our dead lovers.

Place is character. And all writing is regional.