I'm drawn to write about upstate New York in the way in which a dreamer might have recurring dreams. My childhood and girlhood were spent in upstate New York, in the country north of Buffalo and West of Rochester. So this part of New York state is very familiar to me and, with its economic difficulties, has become emblematic of much of American life.

My life is a very interior and solitary life. I tend not to care that much about external things.

It feels good, honey, but it isn't love.

Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.

And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo - that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it has the power to make of us not simply victims, as nature and accident do, but active accomplices.

Like a flame is real enough, isn't it, while it's burning?-even if there's a time it goes out?

I work very slowly. It's like building a ladder, where you're building your own ladder rung by rung, and you're climbing the ladder. It's not the best way to build a ladder, but I don't know any other way.