Women have waited millions of years, growing separate as another species, with visions and priorities no man-words, no man-measurements can comprehend.

Writing is like hunting. There are brutally cold afternoons with nothing in sight, only the wind and your breaking heart. Then the moment when you bag something big. The entire process is beyond intoxicating.

The Peruvian flute music is . . . cool. In this music, they have not yet invented the industrial revolution that leads to excessive punctuality or the failed experiment they call the nuclear family. This is the music of elements, untarnished, unrehearsed.

All good writing is built one good line at a time. You build a novel the same way you do a pyramid. One word, one stone at a time, underneath a full moon while the fingers bleed.

Whenever I get lost in a novel I just throw a poem in. What it does is flare up, and it's so illuminated that I'm able to see where to go. I write between these illuminations.

I have a great ability to improvise verbally and I am very funny on a dime.

If you can be anything else but a writer, be it.