The written word, obviously, is very inward, and when we're reading, we're thinking. It's a sort of spiritual, meditative activity. When we're looking at visual objects, I think our eyes are obviously directed outward, so there's not as much reflective time. And it's the reflectiveness and the spiritual inwardness about reading that appeals to me.

No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time.

At a time when politics deals in distortions and half truths, truth is to be found in the liberal arts. There's something afoot in this country and you are very much a part of it.

Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor.

The relationship between parents and children, but especially between mothers and daughters, is tremendously powerful, scarcely to be comprehended in any rational way.

These novels [Zombie, My Sister, My Love] are so special to me. [I don't expect that they will have nearly the same significance to anyone else.] They represent a kind of fiction I would love to pursue more or less constantly, but dare not.

When one crosses over from an activity, or the verb, of writing or doing, and becomes a noun, like "a writer" I think that is an act of supreme self-consciousness that I've never, in effect, made. I write, but I don't like to think of myself as a writer. I think it's somewhat self-aggrandizing and pretentious. Now, I am a teacher.