I am worthy of being read. I mean, one has to be convinced of one's genius.

One of my moments of coming to writing, of needing to write to attempt to create myself, to attempt to absolve and understand my past passivity, came when a girl I loved very much, who I had been estranged from for some time, killed herself.

The biographies of the great men see their excesses as signs of their greatness.

I hope what I do when I draw from other people's lives is pay tribute. To try to understand what it means in our society to be silenced. To try to understand how class and gender intersect with that. To try to understand how being named and classified within the context of psychiatry can intersect with all that, as well.

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.

The nonfiction novel or literary memoir as authored by women is usually given a much harder time in mainstream criticism.

I think genius can have a lot to do with nerve. And permission.