I was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway.

Impossible not to imagine the dead observing us. Our love for them a soft, shimmering gossamar that trails behind us.

Each time I undertake to reread Virginia Woolf, I am somewhat baffled by the signature breathlessness and relentlessly "poetic" tone, the shimmering impressionism, so very different from the vivid, precise, magisterial (and often very funny) prose of her contemporary James Joyce.

I write so much because my cat sits on my lap. She purrs so I don't want to get up. She's so much more calming than my husband.

My parents inspired me by their example. They both grew up in the Depression, and both of them had to quit school when they were quite young to work, because there actually was no choice. So they've always impressed me with their resilience, their good spirits, their courage. I just remember them carrying on and just doing their lives. They really made a strong impression on me.

Her problem wasn't she was a dumb blonde, it was she wasn't a blonde and she wasn't dumb.

Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!