I write so much because my cat sits on my lap. She purrs so I don't want to get up. She's so much more calming than my husband.

All that matters in life is forging deep ties of love and family and friends. Writing and reading come later.

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.

The heavenly light you admire is fossil-light, it's the unfathomably distant past you gaze into, stars long extinct

I see the world in ways that might be considered somewhat harsh and Darwinistic. At the same time mediated, as in Darwin, by a real idealism and an excitement about the possibilities of the intellect and imagination to deal with this somewhat brutal world.

I don't know what marriages are like in general, but there are many things which I don't talk about with my husband. We discuss practical problems, but I wouldn't sit down with him and talk about the distant past. It's somewhat in contrast to other Americans, who feel that they have to confess things, but I'm really not like that.

I am what would be called a 'mainstream feminist,' not a radical feminist.