We're accepted as long as we conform to what we are expected to be, and I'm sure that's not any different for anyone else.

If we do not begin to practice the muscles of having a possessive investment in each other's oppressions, then we are in some serious trouble.

Of course we all know that's not how life works. The novel that is our life can end at any time. Sometimes even on page one.

You must learn her. You must know the reason why she is silent. You must trace her weakest spots. You must write to her. You must remind her that you are there. You must know how long it takes for her to give up. You must be there to hold her when she is about to. You must love her because many have tried and failed. And she wants to know that she is worthy to be loved, that she is worthy to be kept. And, this is how you keep her.

Usually at the end of each story we're thrown clear out of the story's world and then we're given a new world to enter. What's unique about a linked collection is that it can deliver both sets of narrative pleasures - the novel's long immersion into character-world and the story anthology's energetic (and mortal) brevity - the linked collection is unique in its ability to be both abrupt and longitudinal simultaneously.

You were at the age where you could fall in love with a girl over an expression, over a gesture

When you're the ones in the life raft and you have four or five women in the life raft who put it together, by the end of it your nerves are blown. The people you're going to attack are the people who are helping you, who you are holding it together with.