For years I lived rather medicated and muted - I did not possess language to describe my vague feelings of unhappiness, to politicize it, to attempt to transcend it.

When I get too worked up about things I have always escaped into catatonia.

I think the mad wives and mistresses are my hysterics - even the fictionalized ones. I want to trace how they were silenced, I want to find for them an escape route.

The hope in literature is that we are allowed to be imperfect, to write of our imperfection, without being overly critiqued for being unlikeable.

I think the key to writing the truth of our existences, so much of this is being incubated online, is examining the conflicts and the messiness, our sometimes dividedness, dealing with gender and other hierarchies, and also our identities outside of them, deeply personal and yet somehow critical and circumspect.

For years I lived rather medicated and muted - I did not possess language to describe my vague feelings of unhappiness, to politicize it, to attempt to transcend it.

I do think that memoirs by women are reviewed differently and considered somewhat outside of the canon.