When you're in the world looking for only one thing, you find it or it finds you. The obsession can be mutual

I believe that one of the most damning things about our culture is the adage to never talk religion and politics. Because we don't model this discourse at the dinner table and at Thanksgiving, we don't know how to do it well and we're not teaching our children about the world and about how to discuss it.

Literature has done great work for feminism - writing and reading are a practice of empathy - and great literature will continue to do so.

The generation of women who came before us did much of our shouting. They laid the groundwork and now we can be calm and constant and steady.

When you're in the world looking for only one thing, you find it or it finds you. The obsession can be mutual

First, you hand over some basics-overwhelming joy, existential angst, a giving-in to desire, etc. And then you promise to withstand talking idly about the weather, to encourage cliché, to uphold the virtues of average. You hand over the need to be understood and, in return, you get a bar of Normal soap. And you can wash in it and be daily reborn to a safe world of modest, enduring love or, at least, mild, well-mannered bonding.

If I'd learned nothing else, it was this: If you want to be a great writer, be a man. If you can't be a man, write like one.