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

The facts, however, are unimportant in fiction. It's not the events of my life that I mine, but the emotional experiences I've had.

I had begun what I thought might be a career in social work. I was married and deeply involved in the anti-war movement. I thought I'd go about saving the world one person at a time. I worked with kids, teenagers mostly, in neighborhood centers, on the streets, and eventually in a drop-in center.

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.

Writing a story, you understand, is not done by consensus. But we do learn from each other, and we remind ourselves how important this work we're doing is.

I learned to love stories by listening to them.

Every person in therapy has a love disorder.