The greatest realities are physical and economic, all the subtleties of life come afterward.

My grandmother could never have written a memoir, so 'The Gravedigger's Daughter' is a homage to her life, and to the lives of other young women of her generation, which are so rarely articulated.

When my brother called to inform me, on the morning of May 22, 2003, that our mother Caroline Oates had died suddenly of a stroke, it was a shock from which, in a way, I have yet to recover.

What is a family, after all, except memories? Haphazard and precious as the contents of a catch-all drawer in the kitchen.

I think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event, the junctures of people's lives when they go in one direction, not another.

In love there are two things - bodies and words.

I don't believe in predestination - except for genetic predilections.