There should really not be anything gratuitous in a work of art. Sometimes what seems as if it's gratuitous may be a passage in which a character is being characterized so that the reader comes to know him or her better.
Never be ashamed of your subject, and of your passion for your subject.
It feels good, honey, but it isn't love.
I never change, I simply become more myself.
Tragedy is the highest form of art.
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.