It's a taboo subject. How the dead are betrayed by the living. We who are living--we who have survived--understand that our guilt is what links us to the dead. At all times we can hear them calling to us, a growing incredulity in their voices, You will not forget me -- will you? How can you forget me? I have no one but you.

I rarely write in my own voice except in book reviews and memoirs; otherwise, I am writing in mediated voices, modulated in terms of the characters whom the voices express.

It is important for me to discover the ideal title, for without this title the story or novel isn't quite in focus.

I love insult, it's always honest.

Technique holds a reader from sentence to sentence, but only content will stay in his mind.

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

He was ugly, himself. Weird-ugly. But ugliness in a man doesn't matter, much. Ugliness in a woman is her life.