The despairing soul is a rebel.

Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.

'We Were the Mulvaneys' is perhaps the novel closest to my heart. I think of it as a valentine to a passing way of American life, and to my own particular child - and girlhood in upstate New York. Everyone in the novel is enormously close to me, including Marianne's cat, Muffin, who was in fact my own cat.

Any kind of creative activity is likely to be stressful. The more anxiety, the more you feel that you are headed in the right direction. Easiness, relaxation, comfort - these are not conditions that usually accompany serious work.

Writing! The activity for which the only adequate bribe is the possibility of suicide, one day.

I'm sure all that you've heard is just the usual gossip, invented to injure feelings rather than illuminate truth.

Not even the most devastating truth can be told; it must be evoked.