One of life's minor satisfactions is forgetting.

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.

Much of my writing is energized by unresolved memories - something like ghosts in the psychological sense.

How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.

Ultimately, we measure ourselves against our own ideas of idealism and perfection, and we don't always come very close to them.

Most people who are writers go through periods when they can't write.

One man's insanity is another man's genius; someday the world will recognize the genius in my insanity.